Justin-Klein.com – Life of a Traveling Programmer

Dylan and I at Nanzenji on the Eastern side of Kyoto

Wow, it sure is nice to be back in Kyoto. It’s strange, but I’ve never quite realized until now how much of a second home this city has become. Even though I no longer live at the Rits dorm, even though most of the people I knew have gone back to their home countries or gone elsewhere to study abroad, it somehow feels like…I don’t know, like it just “fits.” That isn’t to say that Kyoto could ever replace LA or San Diego as my true home, but I suppose this is just what happens when you spend a long enough time living in one place.

And while I obviously really love traveling, it’s nice to at last be back where I know where everything is, and where I can communicate with the people around me. I feel like my Japanese got a lot rustier during the time that I was in China, but I’m sure it’ll come back quickly enough. I hope.

Cherry-blossom viewing in Kyoto last May

In fact, it was interesting to “feel” the language start coming back to me as early as the airport terminal in Shanghai. I’d become so accustomed to not understanding anything in China that even the Japanese boarding announcements felt somewhat soothing to hear. And then on the plane, being able to understand the Japanese subtitles for the Chinese safety announcements.
Continue reading »

A row of food booths at a festival last winter in Kyoto, not dissimilar (at a glance) to the night market in Beijing.

At a glance, the Beijing night market my dad and I visited after descending the Great Wall appeared to be very similar to the countless Japanese festivals with which I’ve grown familiar over the past year. Small booths set up in a row alongside a walking promenade offering various snacks for anyone who happens by. But this one was somehow different. Perhaps it had something to do with their rather unique culinary offerings.

This lovely collector’s piece was located in front of a meat market right across the street from a bunch of tied-up chickens. The butcher himself can be seen in the next picture…

Instead of Okonomiyaki, Yakitori, and Yakisoba these booths offered silkworms, centipedes, flies, locusts, scorpions, frogs, snakes, snake skin, dog meat, cat meat, sheep scrotum, sheep penis, sea star, sea horse, sea urchin, and sparrow…all skewered. It was quite odd to hear the shouts of “irasshaimase” (the welcoming phrase used by street vendors in Japan) replaced with shouts of “Testicles! Penises! Snakes!” from Chinese men and women holding out skewers with pieces of meat hanging off of them.
Continue reading »

The lobby at our hotel in Beijing. Holy crap. It has a lobby!

Wow, what a different type of traveling. I’ve been wandering the earth on my own, popping in and out of cheap hostels, crashing at friends’ places, and napping on park benches for so long that I almost forgot what “nice” traveling feels like. I’m writing now from a room with only two beds (as opposed to the twelve in many of my recent rooms), one for me and one for my dad, on the 19th floor of the Capital Hotel in Beijing, China. It has two restaurants, an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, a weight room, and HBO. And our own private bathroom.

Different from black taxis, these drivers will chase you for blocks always reducing the price until it’s so low that you just can’t resist going for a little ride.

But I should probably start from the beginning. David and I awoke just before 7am on Friday morning after traveling all night on a train through China to an announcement saying that we had just arrived in Beijing. We said goodbye to our two Korean roommates, exited the station, and were immediately swarmed by people trying to sell us everything from tourist maps to little toy dogs that run in circles and bark at you. I’ve become quite adept at fending off the hawkers over the recent week, but this city posed a new threat to which I almost fell victim: Black Taxis. Thanks to one of David’s friends who’s currently living in Beijing he knew to warn me not to trust any taxi driver who approaches me to offer a ride. Black Taxis are nothing more than guys with normal cars who’ve bought fake plastic “taxi” signs and glued them to the top of their vehicles. They’re almost always dishonest. The first guy who offered us a ride to the hotel wanted seventy yuan, more than six times the price that a metered taxi would cost. I told him I wasn’t stupid, and we got in the “real taxi” line.
Continue reading »