POP POP!

Ask any Japanese student what their hobby is, and 9 times out of 10, the response will be "listen to music" (gerunds, it seems, are not in vogue).  With an entire generation sequestered in rooms just sitting there, listening to music, I was curious as to what kinds of tunes were holding them captive.  Based on their responses, it appears that most of them are caught in the sticky sweet web of J-pop and K-pop (J for Japanese, K for Korean).  Oh yes, there is the occasional ode to Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, or Avril Lavigne, but true love is reserved for the likes of Kara, Girls' Generation, EXILE, and AKB48.  The latter two groups are particularly popular; EXILE is a male group 14 performers strong, whose most notable member is named Atsushi.  Atsushi, a self-proclaimed Boyz II Men devotee, is infamous for wearing sunglasses everywhere, making him look more like a poster boy for the yakuza than a boy band.   

Atsushi. From http://item.rakuten.co.jp

AKB48, on the other hand, blows all other ensembles out of the water, with 64 members.  That's right, SIXTY. FOUR.  In fact, I read somewhere that it holds the Guinness World Record for being the largest pop group in existence.  That's not including Aimi Eguchi, AKB's "newest member," who was eventually revealed to be a fictional person, her image actually a mash up of the features of other AKB48 stars, Photoshopped together.

Aimi Eguchi.  From http://www.asianbite.com

Pop music encourages an interesting sociological study into what Japanese people find entertaining, if not attractive.  For the most part, it seems to be androgynous young males (kireo) and young women who are made to look younger than their actual age.  As one of my friends recently wrote to me after discovering an AKB48 video on YouTube: "Felt like it was sexualizing 12 year olds.  Couldn't watch.  Still listening though.  Still horrible."  Also popular are the child performers like Mana Ashida, whose hit "Maru Maru Mori Mori" is ubiquitous.  The trend appears to be that all of these acts exemplify the "cute culture" that is so popular in Japan, even though we as westerners think they are a little weird (be sure not to miss 3:28).

The merchandising for these groups is a fascinating business model.  Clothing, towels, school supplies, cell phones, and even foods are branded with various pop groups.  Need internet service? Sign up for AKB48 internet, and, among other things, you can create a virtual love child with any of the group's 64 members.  Want to ensure that your favorite AKB starlet is included in the main lineup?  You can buy a ticket and vote in the election (or hope that your choice wins in an epic janken, or rock-paper-scissors, match).  

Each year, the English Speaking Society at my high school selects one or two songs to perform in front of the entire student body at our school festival in September.  This year they've outdone themselves with two J-pop numbers, "Share the World," and "The Boys."  If you click on the links, you can hear the songs in their entirety.  I'll say no more about them, but if you do give them a listen, please try to envision me, the other (male) English teacher DL, and a group of (sweet, innocent, awkward and very young) high school girls singing and dancing along.  

GOD WILLING AND THE CREEK DON'T RISE

Greetings from a water-logged Japan.  I'm sure there's an ark floating around here somewhere... We are smack in the middle of tsuyu, or the "rainy season," and yesterday marked the 3rd typhoon we've survived in 11 months.  The weather was so dire that afternoon classes were canceled, prompting a loud cheer to go up throughout the school.  I, however, was feeling less cheerful when I arrived home from school dripping wet and had to wring out all my clothes before hanging them to dry.  On the other hand, this puts into perspective the two-piece maroon rain suit that one of my predecessors bequeathed to me.  

The real vexation of the rainy season is that it has limited my mobility, thus giving me less and less fodder for blog posts.  However, stick with me.  Rainy season has to end some time. On the upside, the hydrangeas are rioting in bloom.

STRANGER DANGER

A few months ago my supervisor suggested that I leave school early so I could "go study Japanese culture."  Wink wink.  Needing no further encouragement, I set off for home, and on the way was approached by a man I've never seen before.  "Are you a foreigner?" he asked me.  This was not a rhetorical question; he waited for me to confirm my gaijin status before he took out a bunch of business cards.  This in and of itself is not unusual- I've had teachers, strangers, even students proffer me their cards before. It's actually quite sophisticated.  But this individual took out his business cards, pointed at the kanji and said, "I am doctor."  I studied him closely.  Late thirties, pronounced limp, at home in the middle of the day wearing jeans and a rugby shirt, with a ring of some yellowish substance caked around his mouth that I don't want to think too hard about.  "Yeah, right" was my first thought.  But because I realized that he was not quite right in the head, I smiled and nodded in an attempt to play along.  A mistake, as it turns out.  It got weird after that.  First he attempted to take my pulse by barely pressing his fingers to my wrist- I suppose to demonstrate his doctor skills.  Then he motioned for me to follow him up the street (which was the way I was walking anyway).  I followed, but when he indicated that I should walk into his house, every after school special from my childhood came flooding back to me in brilliant color.  I firmly told him no and backed away, but not before he made another attempt to take my pulse.  Which I guess is better than being found dead in some guy's bathtub (which happened to a British subject a few years back), but it's still creepy.  I haven't seen the man since, but it shook my conception of Japan as a safe haven, free of the dangers that plague other countries.  

A further reminder on this point occurred last week, when the last two people involved in a deadly sarin attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 were apprehended.  The closing of that chapter seemed to relieve a lot of people, even though we go about our daily lives without any real fear of terrorist attacks or violence.  Most of the "crime" that goes on in Japan is pretty benign: having one's bicycle "borrowed," only to have it turn up again; pick pocketing by teenage hoodlums (they could learn a thing or two from Oliver & company- more often than not they are caught in the act); and underwear thieves.  Yes, this is an actual thing.  JET orientation provides a series of warnings against drying your clothes outside (dryers are unheard of here), for fear that ladies' unmentionables will be pilfered by predatory male weirdos.  One thief was apprehended with something like 100 pairs of underwear that he had taken as trophies.  I guess the one consolation in this is that the underwear are all clean?

LET'S ALL JUST TAKE A MOMENT TO COOL DOWN

Cue the parade! Japan is now nuclear-power free, after having shut down every nuclear-based power plant in the country, as part of measures taken after the big meltdown at Fukushima.  The move may be a good one in the long run, but it couldn't have been more poorly timed.  Power shortages were egregious enough prior to the national shutdown, forcing everyone to ration electricity.  However, there is now real concern about what it will mean this summer, when the temperatures can easily reach 90-95 degrees Farenheit.  It's already hot enough in the mornings to make getting dressed for work unpleasant after having taken a cool shower.  If it gets bad enough, I'm determined to cobble together an outfit of these, professional dress code be damned.  

A couple of fun links related to Fukushima (thanks to the friends who forwarded these): hipsters in Hazmat suits equipped with Geiger counters, and why nuclear meltdowns are like a woman.  


DON'T LOOK, DON'T TOUCH


Shortly after I turned in my notice at my previous job, I received an email from one of the founding partners of the law firm, summoning me to his office.  As a lowly paralegal, I was surprised; the longest conversations we had had until that point involved him stopping me in the hallway to ask if I had ever been windsurfing, and another time, to tell me about his latest vacation to a private island, where Kenny Chesney apparently lives.  However, based on these interactions, we clearly had a lot in common, and I was sure we'd have a lot to talk about during our impromptu meeting.

It turned out that RS wanted to discuss my move to Japan, and to recount to me his days as an associate, during which he lived in Tokyo for a few months while working on a project.  Then the talk turned serious as he said, "Listen, you really need to be careful of Japanese businessmen. I've heard a lot of stories about women, particularly white women, who have been harassed by some of these guys."  I thanked him for his concern, but pointed out that as a school teacher living in the countryside, I probably wouldn't interact with too many Japanese businessmen.  He reiterated the warning a couple of more times, and ended our tete-a-tete by admonishing me for a final time to be careful.  


And guess what? He was right, except that instead of being harassed by Japanese businessmen, I am groped and inspected daily by pretty much everyone at school, but particularly my hormonal high school students.  They play with my hair, measure my waist with their hands.  I've had a couple of students wrap their arms around me, bury their face in my shirt, and take a deep whiff.  "Smell good," they say.  One girl motioned that she thought I was thin.  "You're skinnier than I am!" I told her.  "No!" she shook her head, and then pointed at me and held her hands out in front of her chest, as though something had exploded.  Then there's the commentary: "You have tall nose!" "You have small face!" "Nice body!" "Sexaaaayyyy!"  And those are just the girls.  Earlier this week, I ran into one of my male students on my way to school.  Waiting at a stop light, we started talking, and he kept fingering the sleeve of my shirt, and at one point grazed the side of my torso with the back of his hand.  When the light changed, he looked straight at my chest, said, "Sexy!" and quickly pedaled off on his bike.  DL is not immune either.  Yesterday we were walking out of school together, and he said, "The most inappropriate thing happened to me today.  I walked into one of my classes, and this first year asked me, 'D, do you have big penis?'"  "That's terrible!" I told him.  "I know, right?" he said, "The worst part was that he said it so timidly.  I mean, if you're going to ask me a question like that, at least have the balls ask it confidently!"

The teachers cross the line, too.  The jokes about the male teachers who are "bad men," the comments if I wear a skirt instead of pants one day.  And there's no defense against it, no matter how conservatively I dress.  Maybe it's something about being a piece of meat foreigner.  LAL speculates that foreigners are kind of an outlet for the pent-up longings, because the Japanese think we're so liberal sexually.  However, I don't know of many (if any) foreigner here who is comfortable with these attentions, particularly the really brazen ones.  MB was walking through his class one day, when a female student reached out and pinched his butt.  He was really upset and shaken about the whole thing, and I don't blame him.  Not only is it a gross violation of one's personal space, but it's such a dangerous game.  Luckily, I don't think any adult here would suspect us of being improper with the students, but you can never be too sure.  It also makes our jobs so much more difficult, because when these awkward episodes occur, it makes us check our friendliness, and puts more distance between us and the students.   

Forget the ice suit.  I'm going to start wearing boxes to work.

THE TRUTH WILL OUT

During my parents' recent visit, they had an opportunity to meet the grannies. This was fun for my parents, and therapeutic for the grannies, who now had an opportunity to vent some of their closely-held opinions of me, the nearly-thirty, unmarried foreign woman.  These were the comments that stuck out: 

As I was setting the table for dinner: "Aha! She will make a good wife for someone."

Mr. M to my father: "Bill-san, I have three daughters, and I know how you must feel that she is not married.  You must be very worried." [To my father's everlasting credit, he did not respond to this.]

A DAY IN THE LIFE

It's been gently suggested that I should include more photos of "daily life" in Japan.  So here you go:

Preparing the rice fields.  A family of ducks is loving this right now.

"Thanks Dad"- Japanese dept. store

Shots from a temple behind my house

WORSHIPPING THE PORCELAIN GOD

Last week I walked into the granny circle to find that their chosen topic for the evening was toilets.   In the hour and a half that followed, we discussed our best and worst public toilet experiences, debated over how often foreign tour companies should allow for toilet breaks in their itineraries (the group had strong opinions on this point), pondered why sanitation varies across countries, and compared different styles of toilets internationally.  Somewhat predictably, the Japanese-designed Western toilet won out in the international competition, having gained high marks in the categories of sanitation, promotion of personal hygiene (the bidet is crucial, the grannies argue), and overall comfort.   Most of these accolades are warranted; the standardization of heated toilet seats alone ranks as one of the greatest inventions of all time.  However, the bidet still skeezes me out.  

The top panel

6 buttons, one toilet

The Japanese-designed Western toilet is like a rocket ship with varying functions and amenities. During a recent visit from my parents, my mother became enamored of the toilets in their various hotel rooms.  As they moved from city to city and hotel to hotel, she provided for me a rundown of each facility: "So this one has a lot of buttons and that toilet seat warmer,  but I really prefer the one at the Granvia."  By "the one at the Granvia," she meant to throne she dragged me in to see one day when I went to collect them for a day of sightseeing.  "Look!" she exclaimed, "You stand there by the sink, and then walk over to the toilet and then a motion sensor raises the toilet lid!"  She demonstrated this for me before continuing, "And then you sit on the seat and do your business, and when you stand up, the toilet flushes, and after a few minutes, the toilet lid goes down again!"  Lest you think that I am poking fun at my mother for this performance, I will admit that I was also impressed, to a point where I made a video.

The one catch of the premier Japanese toilets is that they rarely come with English labels on the buttons.  As such, I have experienced various traumas whilst in the loo.  First, I emerged wet from my shoulders to my knees at a restaurant after I mistakenly hit the bidet button instead of the flush toggle, and was sprayed for several seconds as I scrambled to find the "stop" button with increased futility.  Then there was the incident at the Kobe port, where I accidentally hit the emergency button in the handicapped toilet (again in lieu of the flush- these toilets are tricky!), and a Japanese woman standing outside with two children tried to break in to help me.  Once she realized I was all right, she easily turned off the alarm; however, the siren could be heard throughout the terminal, and a security guard raced through the building to give me assistance.  Embarrassed doesn't do justice to the moment.


One question the grannies had was whether or not Americans have a toilet god.  A toilet god? I repeated.  Oh yes, they said.  In a long tradition spanning back generations, grandmothers had admonished their granddaughters to keep the toilet clean, telling them that if they did, they would grow up to be beautiful and find good husbands.  One young woman recently became a national sensation when she composed a song on the subject, "Toire no kamisama," or "The God of the Toilet"  Here's the song, in all its 10 minute glory:

One final note: Toilets, it turns out, can even be a tourist attraction, such as this public toilet in Ichihara City.  

DID I DO THAT?

In my pre-Japan research, a friend put me in touch with a former JET who lived in Kyoto.  We met up for lunch one day, and I encouraged her to share with me some of her most memorable moments.  For her, one such memory was the compulsory annual chest x-ray.  She was sent to a doctor's office by herself, and was told that all she would have to do was go in, have the x-ray taken, and leave.  No muss, no fuss, no removal of clothing.  So in she goes, and the first thing the doctor says is for her to take off her shirt, which she does.  Then he tells her she needs to take off something else, so she stripped off her bra, and walks back into the room, to the clearly shocked face of the elderly physician.  He takes the x-ray, and she goes back to school and says to a teacher, "I thought you said I didn't have to remove my shirt, but the doctor made me!"  The teacher, thinking this was funny business on the part of the doctor, called his office for an explanation.  "I told her to take off her necklace!" he said, "And she walked in half naked!"


Thanks to this friend, I was determined to be more savvy during my own x-ray.  Instead, I ended up writing her the following email:


I walked into school this morning and was informed that I needed to go have a chest x-ray taken.  They're doing the x-rays in the back of a camper van out by the school gym.  Very classy.  I had been told by a teacher that I didn't need to take anything off except my sweater and any jewelry, so in I went.  Once I was sitting in the "privacy area"- an upholstered bench seat behind some short curtains, the technicians told me that I needed to unzip my dress and take off my bra.  So I did.  And of course when the lady technician comes back, I'm sitting there bra-less, with the top of my dress folded down over my waist.  This seems to freak her out, so she grabs my sweater and drapes it hastily over me before ushering me into the x-ray room to where the male technician is standing.  Then I inadvertently flash him as he's situating me near the machine.

Basically, it was a good morning.

A COMPENDIUM OF CONVERSATIONS

Billy Cosby wasn't fooling when he said, "Kids say the darndest things." However, he never tapped into a vast reservoir of humor: kids trying to communicate in a foreign language. Since starting the new school year, I've noticed that students are far more eager to talk to me outside of class. I love this for so many reasons, not least of which because they are often so entertaining. I've started making notes of the conversational gems I've encountered, as well as some of the strange situations. Enjoy.

-----
Visiting sensei sitting across from me is wearing leather pants and a cravat. 

-----
Just got hugged by my favorite JTE. Twice. Was this uncomfortable because a) living in Japan for 8 months has made me unused to human contact, b) because the hugs lasted about a minute in total, or c) both?
-----
Just watched as one of the teachers woke up from the nap he was taking at his desk (at 9am), and then realized with panic that he was late for a faculty meeting. Drool dribbling down the side of his mouth, he leaped up, tripped over a trashcan, and then the cord to the space heater, sending things flying. Not bothering to set anything to rights, he raced out of the room.

-----
[Shortly after Whitney Houston died:]

Very macho baseball coach is absent-mindedly humming, "And I Will Always Love You."

-----
Second years are working on a commercial or advertisement for a product of their choosing. "Madam Donut" features a collection of leopard print, tofu, and collagen donuts. Thinking this was a mistranslation by an electronic dictionary, I asked what they thought "collagen" meant. "You know, it makes you young and beautiful." When I argued that collagen can't be ingested, they blinked and replied, "It's a magic donut."

-----
Realized today that I can get my students to do pretty much 
whatever I want if I pretend to cry.  One of my students has come to class unprepared two weeks in a row for a presentation he has to give.  Finally, I told him that I wouldn't give him any more time.  He had to do it that day.  He told me, "No."  Instead of being overly positive and encouraging him or yelling at him, I put on an incredibly hammish crying face and told him he was making me so sad, would he PLEASE do his presentation.  And then I waited, looking at him with the sad face.  As the minutes passed, the whole class became very uncomfortable, until finally, one of the other male students said, "Hey, she's being so cute. Do the presentation."  The peer pressure worked, and he gave his speech without further ado.  I tried a similar tack with a class that had forgotten to do their homework. Last year, I'd ask students to give me their work the next day, and I'd be lucky if they gave me the assignment by the end of term.  This time, the students lined up at lunch the next day to give me their worksheets.  GUILTING VICTORY.
-----
While playing the Game of Life board game in ESS club, we had a small crisis. [If you've never played this game, it's a bit like a Candy Land and Monopoly mashup. Each player has a game token of a car, into which they can insert an androgynous plastic person that is either blue or pink. If you get married or have children during the game, you can add other figures to the car as well.]

The club, made up of all girls, literally screamed when one team landed on the "get married" space, and a girl accidentally handed me a pink person to join another pink person in the car. I took this as an opportunity to ask them their feelings about gay marriage, thinking it could be a great segue into a conversation with them. However, the question could not have made them more palpably uncomfortable. They stood there, glancing at each other nervously, shifting from foot to foot and doing a nonverbal hot potato of "You say something." Finally, the club captain spoke up and said, "I think love is the most important thing." We ended up leaving it at that.
-----
My third years were doing a project this week where they had to pretend they were cartoon characters who had been wrecked on a Pacific island, and there was only enough food for some of them to live. The group had to decide who would live and who would die based on information I gave each of them, and then explain their decision. Overheard in one group of girls:

“Anpanman, you will die. And then we’ll eat your face.”

-----
My kids enjoy asking me how old I am, and are always surprised by my answer. Yesterday they sat there, shaking their heads.

"What's the matter?" I asked.
"So sad. You are almost misoji [thirty]."

Thanks, guys. I can feel the pall of death on me already.

------
In a conversation with one of my [female] students:

‎"Eri-sensei, you are so melty."
"What does that mean?"
"You are so cute, you are melty. Like Melty Kiss!"

CAMBODIA, PART II: PHNOM PENH, WINNER*

*Of the award for the worst place I have ever been.

THE INFERNO

Phnom Penh is no laughing matter

I flatter myself to think I've been to several of what could be considered the armpits of the world: Mexico City, Delhi, Beijing, Detroit.  Poverty, sanitation, pollution, crime, poor infrastructure, lack of potable water- these are all factors that plague these areas.  And yet, with the exception of Detroit, each city has its own redeeming virtue or virtues- architecture, food, history, the people, etc.  Not so with Phnom Penh.   Whatever charm the city might have had during the days of French colonialism or before has long since passed.  Heaps of rotting trash, questionable feces, leaking batteries, broken furniture, and other unmentionables lay everywhere.  I watched one Cambodian squat in a garbage pile in front of his (her? I couldn't tell) friends, defecate, and then pick up a rag from the surrounding pile and wipe himself. The stench and the fumes of the city overpower everything, though the noxious haze is occasionally cut by the sweet scent of the frangipani trees.  After one night, we were ready to leave.  


The city didn't improve upon closer exploration.  Our first full day was spent walking around the grounds of the royal palace and the National Museum, on a day where the temperature was well into the triple digits.  The former had no shade, and the latter no air conditioning, and by 1pm we were forced to retreat, drenched and exhausted, to our hotel.  Remarkable, considering that we managed to spend entire days hiking and climbing in the sweltering heat of Angkor with little more than a quick lunch and a bathroom break.  To make matters worse, we were continually thwarted by the arbitrary opening and closing times of various establishments in Phnom Penh, such as being unceremoniously ushered out of the royal complex when they decided to shut down (presumably for lunch) at 11AM.  

Royal Throne Room

City folk were also a disappointment.  People were brusque to the point of being rude; there was none of the graciousness or warmth of the people of Siem Reap.  The few friendly overtures made to us were by people vying to sell us things or offer their services.  We managed to get by speaking English the whole trip, because Cambodians seem to speak every language under the sun: English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, French.  I heard one guide speaking impeccably accented Castillian Spanish.  Linguistic abilities are far better in Siem Reap than Phnom Penh, perhaps because SR is more reliant on tourism as a source of income.  I asked a few people how they had learned the different languages they speak.  Books seemed to be the main tutor, though some listen to the radio or watch foreign television programs.  No one mentioned having taken language classes in school.


It takes a while, but at some point you suddenly realize how young the population of Cambodia is.  The middle-aged and the elderly are almost non-existent demographics.  Given the history of the country, you have to wonder at the stories of the older people you do see.  LAL remarked that the elderly deserved a badge of honor for having survived, but I wonder if for some of them, it's a burden to have lived through the things they have.  


A common sight is older male expats with young Cambodian women.  The inverse correlation at work is troubling: the older the man, the younger the woman.  Yet it appeared as though these women were more than just an escort for the evening; in most cases, the couples seemed to be running errands, eating a simple meal, going for a walk, etc.  This barely lessened the ick factor, which none of us could seem to shake.  We stayed at a guest house situated above a popular bar, "The Lone Star Saloon."  Every night we'd return to find a slew of foreign men in their 30s-50s sitting at the bar, buying drinks for heavily made up Cambodian girls who were probably a few years shy of the legal drinking age in the States.  These girls would start hanging out in front of the doors starting around 4 or 5, waiting to meet up with someone.  

Our one solace was the food.  We ate fairly well (and cheaply) everywhere, but particularly in Phnom Penh.  Though Cambodias are not the best at preparing meat or fish, they more than make up for their protein shortcomings with delicious fruit drinks.  We even managed to sample a variety of Khmer delicacies, some more palatable than others.  I ordered crispy tarantulas one night, and then about jumped out of my skin when my plate arrived.  It turns out that they look remarkably similar in death as in life.  This impression did not diminish when the waiter brought a live specimen to our table to show us.  I managed to get it together enough to eat a leg, thanks to LAL's support.  It turns out tarantulas are incredibly delicious, and soon I had eaten all the legs, and was left to conjure up the willpower to eat the rest of the bodies...reluctantly.

THE 9TH CIRCLE


In 1975, the French-sponsored government of Indochine was overthrown by Communist forces led by Pol Pot.  These revolutionaries called themselves the Khmer Rouge- Khmer from the largest ethnic group in Cambodia, rouge ("red") from the color most associated with Communism.  Pol Pot's vision was for a pure Communist state, where the people would work and live off the land.  There would be no need for doctors, lawyers, or teachers.  In fact, these learned individuals were viewed as the enemy, along with capitalists, the CIA, and the KGB (by this time, the Soviet Communists were at odds with their Chinese brethren, with whose tenets the Khmer Rouge identified).  One of the great inconsistencies of this policy was that Pol Pot and all the top leaders of the Khmer Rouge were highly educated individuals, many of whom had even obtained degrees while studying in Paris.


Pol Pot's first act was to expel people from the major urban areas into the countryside.  In Phnom Penh, people were settled in different quarters of the city under the French (the French and other diplomats in one quarter, the Chinese in another, the Vietnamese in a third, and Cambodians in a fourth). Soldiers took over different quarters, and marshaled people out, irrespective of whether those people lived in that quarter, or simply worked there or were passing through on there way to someplace else.  As a result, many families were separated in the forced exodus, and there are some who are still unsure as to what happened to their loved ones.  


Farms were commandeered and collectivized, and people forced to work the land- men, women and children.  The crops grown (mainly rice) were then sold to China for arms and munitions, even though the workers themselves were starving.  Pol Pot expected to triple rice production through these measure- an impossible feat.  As the paranoia of the regime increased, various detention centers were set up for interrogation to ferret out the disloyal- those not working hard enough, those working for the CIA, the KGB.  One such center was S-21, or Tuol Sleng. Formerly a primary and secondary school, it was transformed into a holding area used for torture and questioning.  At one point, rooms in the prison were remodeled so as to insulate the sounds of the screams coming from inside.  When the Vietnamese liberated Phnom Penh in 1978, they found only 7 survivors, all of whose lives had been spared due to their utility as artists, engineers, etc.  Liberators also found the remains of 14 people, including 1 woman, who were unidentifiable due to decomposition.  These bodies are buried on the grounds in front of the building in which they were discovered.  

Despite being poorly curated, the museum of Tuol Sleng is powerful.  Little has been done to renovate the place, which has certain benefits.  The oppressive heat in the close rooms, coupled with the dirty, stained ceramic floors, immediately cause you to feel the proximity of death.  The rooms are barren, save for a few displays- a rusty bed, shackles, black-and-white photos of decomposing bodies.  Then there are the series of photographs mounted on larger boards.  Some are of guards, young men and women in their early 20s.  Then there are the rows of inmates.  Men, women, children, and some foreigners- there are hundreds of them.  The perverse thing is that some of them are smiling, as though posing for a portrait.  Others look out hollow-eyed, as though they can see into their future.  They are all wearing numbers, and all I can think is that these episodes in history always seem to involve numbers.  Detailed records of names, ages, family histories, etc., are reduced to a combination of digits, and I hate them almost as much as I hate the looks on these faces.  To become a face on these walls was remarkably easy- someone simply had to report some kind of suspicion of you, and away you went.  Not even members of the Khmer Rouge were safe.  As the years went on, the suspicions turned inward, and revolutionaries became inmates themselves.  Eventually, those who survived questioning were transported to a "new home."


About 30 minutes from Tuol Sleng is Choeung Ek, or "The Killing Fields."  People were sent here by the truckloads to be executed.  Since bullets were expensive, people were usually lined up on the sides of pits and then beaten or hacked to death.  Some infants were clubbed against trees in front of their mothers.  Unlike the Nazis with their crematoriums, the dead or dying bodies were covered in DDT to conceal the smell and left there.  After Pol Pot was toppled, locals went onto the grounds looking for food to forage.  What they found were tracts of ground bubbling up from the gases of the decaying bodies below.

When the rains are heavy, the soil is washed away to reveal what is left of those who died at the Killing Fields.  It is truly horrifying to walk along the dirt paths of the area today, watching for a stray root or stone that might trip you, only to realize that you are stepping on bones.  Or the remnants of someone's clothes.  Or their teeth, which are still all in a line.  Every few months, these artifacts are collected and deposited with all the rest that have been found.  The memorial stupa at the center of the grounds holds 17 stories of different bones.


From 1975-1978, Pol Pot killed 3 million people, out of a population of 8 million. 

Human teeth and cloth, the Killing Fields

Small sample from the 17 story stupa

CAMBODIA PART I: SIEM REAP

The most glorious week of the year in Japan is undoubtedly the aptly named Golden Week.  Every May, the country celebrates a string of successive national holidays, so that everyone has almost a full week off from work and school.  I spent my inaugural Golden Week in Cambodia.


When I announced my intended destination to Japanese friends and colleagues, their shock was palpable.  It should be noted that many people don't travel around Japan, much less pack up and travel abroad.  I'm still surprised every time I tell someone, "I'm going to Place X this weekend.  Have you visited there?," and their response is no.  When discussing bucket lists with my adult eikaiwa group, we talked a lot about places we want to travel, and Mr. M asked me why I wasn't more interested in going to Europe.  His attitude seemed to be, "Why would you want to go to Asia or someplace like Egypt, when you could go to France or Italy instead?"  


"NO THANKS, YOU BUY"


We prepped for our Cambodian adventure by buying large amounts of sunscreen, researching local foods, reading some books, starting a malaria prophylaxis regimen, and watching Tomb Raider.  We also received a lot of advice from friends and family, who all gave glowing accounts of their time in Cambodia...save one.  "It was grand," said Paul, "But there's quite a lot of people trying to take advantage of you, so you have to be cold and hard sometimes.  Elizabeth shouldn't have a problem with that, but the rest of you should toughen up."  He was right about one thing- we were inundated by requests for money; however, I think BAL and I tied for being most hardened to the pleas.  What's interesting is the tack people take in Cambodia, beggars and professionals alike.


Our cab driver from the Siem Reap airport (which is super swank, by the way) was very friendly, until he started trying to pigeonhole us into hiring him as our driver during our stay.  Since we hadn't definitively decided where we would go first the next day or what time we would start, we told him that we'd be happy to call him after we'd discussed our plans.  Would he give us his phone number?  He told us that he couldn't give us his number, that he doesn't get mobile service in his home, but that he could still come meet us the next day.  This went on for some time, back and forth, while he dropped other bits of information, like, "There are over 200 cab drivers in Siem Reap and this is the low season.  If I'm lucky, maybe I will get one job a week.  So I can come by your hotel at whatever time tomorrow you want."  Finally, we told him that we couldn't commit at that moment, and unless he gave us a way to contact him, that was all we could say.  We sat in near silence for the rest of the drive, and as we got close to the hotel, we thanked him for his help.  "Don't thank me, give me a job!" he exploded.  The next day, a young girl selling postcards by Angkor Wat said something similar to me.  She was trying to get me to buy her wares, and I told her, "No, thank you.  I'm OK."  Without missing a beat, she said authoritatively, "You OK, but I not OK! No [say] thanks, I want you to buy!"  


I've been to a lot of poor countries, and I've seen a lot of people begging for money.  Some are trying to sell things, as they do in Cambodia ("We don't want money! We want a job!" says one sign in Phnom Penh), while others are flat-out looking for charity.  But I've never been anyplace (China, India, Central and South America, Europe, etc.) where people were trying to guilt you into handing over your cash.  Their reasoning is that because you have money and are in their country, you should be giving it to them.  It is true that these people live unimaginably hard lives, and yes, it would be great if my $1 for a bunch of postcards helped that girl's family.  But where the children are concerned, at least, they don't keep any of the money they are given.  LAL would buy something from small children, and as we walked away, a man who had been lurking behind a tree or in the shadows would walk out, hand outstretched, and take the money from the child.  Then the kid would go back to work.  At first I was discouraged by these scenarios, and then eventually became outright irritated.  Wherever you go, there is someone hovering over you, trying to get you to buy something, or to pay them to do something for you, and they will keep pressing you until you walk away, and they will make you feel bad about it if you say no.  


Money turned out to be a major recurring theme of our trip.  The Cambodian currency is officially the riel, but everyone accepts US dollars.  It's rather disconcerting to pay for something in American currency, and to receive in change a mix of dollars and riel (the riel substitutes for US coins).  We jokingly dubbed riel "Monopoly money," because $0.50 in change often resulted in a wad of riel bills being passed our way.  Interestingly, dollars are very common in Siem Reap, but riel are more frequently used in the capital, Phnom Penh.  


Money is a constant concern and topic of conversation in Cambodia.  Our tuk tuk driver told us several times (enviously, it seemed) about a friend of his who was moving to Korea for 4 years to work in a factory.  "He will earn $1,000 a year!" he said, shaking his head in wonder.  There are very few fixed prices (other than restaurants, hotels, etc.), so often you find yourself haggling for the price of a taxi, or goods at a market, and having to figure out what the fair price should be.  The LAs, generous as they are, were more willing to pay the inflated prices than I (I'm too German for that), which means we probably got ripped off most of the time we were in Cambodia.  When we bought souvenirs or gifts for people, our tuk tuk driver and others would ask us how much we had paid for the goods.  It's an awkward conversation to tell someone that you just paid 2/3 of the cost for hiring a driver for the day on local spices for your friends. 


HEAVEN ON EARTH


The site known as Angkor Wat the world's largest religious building and is actually one in a series of temples built in what is today known as the Angkor Archaeological Park.  Angkor is supposed to be an earthly representation of Mt. Meru, which Hindus regard as the home of the gods.  Indeed, most of the temples were originally built for Hindu gods, and the art is very Indian as a result.  Statues dedicated to Vishnu, Ganesha, and Shiva are everywhere.  However, at some point, Jayavaraman VII, one of the latest and greatest devarajas (god-kings) converted to Buddhism, so the later structures are filled with Buddhas.  

The temples of Angkor Archaeological Park range in size, style and state of preservation.  Some, like Ta Prohm (infamously captured in the film "Tomb Raider"), have been swallowed by the jungle.  Others are more exquisitely preserved thanks to efforts by India, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and others.  Whether intact or in ruins, the entire site is a dream come true for anyone who, like me, dreamed as a child of discovering a lost city or being the next Indiana Jones or Howard Carter.  We spent 4 days exploring the various structures, and there are too many places and experiences to name.  Here are a few highlights:

Ta Prohm

Inside Angkor Wat

• At Preah Khan, one of the temple guardians led me through a maze of caved-in passage ways that seemed to shrink the farther in we went.  I was a bit trepidatious at first, as the LAs had fallen behind and it was just me and this stranger.  Soon we walked into a small alcove, where there was a brightly decorated shrine dedicated to the smiling ancient stone carving of a woman.  This was Jayavaraman VII's first wife, the guide explained.  He lit some incense from the shrine and handed some to me.  Then, on our knees, we bowed and prayed several times.  It was like being in another world.
• Also at Preah Khan, I was jokingly posing for a friend's photo between some apsaras (half-naked, supernatural women), when a Frenchman walked by and said, "You know, if you want to make that authentic, you should take off your top."

Apsaras

• Bayon, built by Jayavaraman VII, has over 216 stone faces peeking out from every direction.  

Bayon

• I made friends with a couple of novice Buddhist monks, who had a lot of questions for me (in English!), including, "Do you have boyfriend?" and then giggled like school children when I responded.  When we parted, one of them kept repeating, very earnestly, "I wish you good fortune, always."

• A terrifying 2 hour trip to Beng Malea in a tuk tuk (auto-rickshaw), followed by exploration of the grounds.  Beng Malea has not been restored at all, and has been torn apart by the jungle, bombs, and land mines.  We toured the site by climbing through narrow passageways held up by thick wooden supports, over large heaps of rubble and fallen stone, and sliding down giant vines- it was an archaeological jungle gym.
• On the way to Beng Malea, traveling along back roads through the countryside.  People, mainly children, started spontaneously waving at us, as though we were neighbors passing by.  Some of the kids got so excited, they'd jump up and down or run after the tuk tuk. I started counting, and in the span of 2 hours, 54 people had waved at us.  

ADIEU, ANGKOR


On the 5th day, we left Siem Reap by bus for Phnom Penh.  Our promised 5 hour ride on an air conditioned bus with a bathroom turned out to be a 7 hour ride in 90 degree heat, with a bucket downstairs in the cargo area.  We made frequent stops along the way to load passengers, 2 motorbikes, a large wooden yoke used for oxen, and a bag of rotting matter that joined us for the final hour and a half of the journey.  I can only assume that this noxious sack was someone's compost heap, from which they were loath to part.  Traveling overland on the Oregon Trail would have been preferable.


We arrived in Phnom Penh stinky, dusty, dehydrated, disgruntled, and with our kidneys aching.  In this frame of mind, we made our first foray into the city.  Details to follow in the next post!