Taken by the Wind » Japan

Travel Videos from Around the Web

Reannon Muth — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 23:19:46 +0000

The following are some of my favorite travel-inspired video clips. I’m sorry they’re so small! I have no idea how to make them bigger… Enjoy. : )

The English Teachers Series

This is the first episode in a series that centers around English teachers in Japan.

I love the Neville character. He reminds me a lot of someone I used to work with in Tokyo who belonged to this weird, cult-like sect of Buddhism and who would spend part of each of class teaching his students karate moves.

You can visit the show’s website for future episodes or for character sketches and a plot synopsis. I can’t wait to see where they go with this.

Where the Hell is Matt?

Matt was once just another unemployed backpacker in SE Asia until one day…Well, I’ll let him tell you.

Here’s an exert from the ‘About Matt’ page on his blog, Where The Hell is Matt?

“A few months into his trip, a travel buddy gave Matt an idea. They were standing around taking pictures in Hanoi, and his friend said “Hey, why don’t you stand over there and do that dance. I’ll record it.” He was referring to a particular dance Matt does. It’s actually the only dance Matt does. He does it badly. Anyway, this turned out to be a very good idea.

A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as “That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I’ll send you the link. It’s funny.”

The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he’d be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they’d be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea.”

Pretty awesome story, huh?

“Life on a Cruise Ship” – A Rap

You probably won’t appreciate this video if you haven’t worked for a cruise line before. But if you’re interested in giving ship-life a shot, this will give you a good idea of how small the crew cabins are and what it looks like below deck.

A Comedian Jokes about the Hazards of Air Travel

You can tell this video is pre-911 because he jokes about an era when there were still curtains separating coach from first class and there was still free in-flight food services.

Prague’s Kafka International Named Most Alienating Airport

Favorite line from a customer service agent: “If there is a problem, fill out complaint form and put it in an envelope addressed to the hospital…in which you were born.”

One-Year-Old Snow-Boarder

Okay, so this one doesn’t have much to do with travel, other than it relates the theory that the way to raise brave, risk-taking children is to start ‘em while they’re young.

Dating When You’re A Broad: It Ain’t Easy!

Reannon Muth — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 20:08:03 +0000

A Couple in the Dark by Carlo Nicora

I don’t write about my dating life on this blog much (or at all, really). When you write about your life on the Internet, you gotta draw the line somewhere and I guess that line for me is discussing details of Relationships Past, Present or Future. I think it’s important to respect people’s privacy, which is why I don’t write about my friends or family much either (other than the occasional, casual mention). That, and most people I know aren’t as comfortable sharing their lives with faceless strangers from the Internet.

Fair enough. Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m comfortable with it, especially when I’m applying for jobs and some of my most personal thoughts and feelings are only a Google-search away from a prospective employer’s eyes. It’s an odd feeling to walk into a job interview and wonder if the manager seated before you has read about that time you set off the fire alarm in the shower or the time James Franco almost fell in love with you. It’s situations like that that make me wonder if I’d be better off blogging anonymously.

Especially when I get concerned phone calls from my parents that begin with: “I read your blog today…about how you got into a fight with the photocopy machine again….” And end with: “Reannon, are you sure you’re okay?”

Recently I broke my vow of silence though and submitted a piece to Vagabondish about how tough it was being single in Tokyo. I actually wrote the piece over a year ago, while I was still living in Japan and submitted it to a few Japan-based magazines and webzines and was told (and I quote) “We get pitched this idea too often.” While it was reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one who found the dating prospects in Japan to be well, limited to say the least, it was also perplexing. If there were other women writing about how they had trouble finding a date in Tokyo, why wasn’t anyone publishing anything about it?

Well, if you were like I was a year ago, a single girl in Japan suffering through both Valentine’s Day (and the equally offensive White Day) with only your boyfriend pillow for company, well you can rest assured that at least there were – and still are – others suffering along side you.

Like one of my favorite bloggers, Sarah Marchildon of The Hollywood North Report, for example. She writes about her dating pitfalls in Japan far better than I ever could (they’re equal parts hilarious and depressing) and provides details that I’d be far too embarrassed to have splashed on the Internet. I’m grateful that she had the courage to include them. My favorite posts of hers were Man Hunt and Man Hunt: Part II.

And then there’s my article: No Sex in the City: What it’s like to be Female and Foreign in Japan.

It’s ironic that some of the qualities that make it possible for western women to move to a foreign country by themselves to begin with (their strength and independence, for instance) are the same qualities that damn them to lives of celibacy once they get there. My male friends have claimed that I’m stereotyping men everywhere with this theory, so you’ll have to let me know what you think. But it’s my opinion that the reason women have trouble dating (locals and foreigners alike) while abroad is that men (in general) are intimidated and threatened by women who are independent and emotionally strong enough to pack up and ship off half way across the world alone.

I could be wrong (and I seriously hope I am, because being right would mean that I’m never going to find a boyfriend ever again) but this article about which sports men find sexiest, certainly suggests that I could be onto something. According to a poll of 6,000 people, which was conducted by Sam Murphy and Richard Wiseman (a fitness expert and a professor from the UK), men ranked aerobics, pilates, ‘going to the gym’ and running as the sexiest female sports. Women, on the other hand, found rock-climbing to be the physical activity they found most attractive on men (an activity that unlike ‘going to the gym’ is an actual sport). Professor Wiseman’s theory for the difference in gender-preferences was this:

“Women’s choices appear to reflect the type of psychological qualities that they find attractive – such as bravery and a willingness to take on challenges – whilst men are more shallow, looking for a woman who is physically fit but not challenging their ego by being overly strong.”

So brave men who read this blog, what do you think? Do you find women who live (or have lived) abroad ‘challenging to your ego’ or is this all a bunch of feminist BS?

Auto Hotels and Love Hotels

Reannon Muth — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:30:46 +0000

Would you pay to have sex in a garage? No? Well if you lived in Central America you might.

Auto Hotel Constelacion in Villahermosa, Mexico

Meet the auto hotel. It’s Central America’s version of North America’s pay-per-the-hour highway motel, except instead of cheating spouses slinking off to Motel Six to do the dirty, they pull into a roadside auto hotel and get it on in a parking stall.

When I first saw an Auto Hotel in Guatemala, I thought it was some sort of overnight parking garage. But then it was explained that although the auto hotel is part-parking garage, it’s main purpose is to provide couples a discreet and private place to go for some alone time. Young people here often live in close quarters with their parents (even after marriage) and privacy is tough to come by.

How it works apparently (I haven’t experienced one personally so I’m not sure of the details) is that you park in an enclosed garage or a parking spot (where a curtain is drawn that shields your car from view). There’s usually a room connected to the garage or parking spot that includes the normal hotel amenities (a bed, a TV, bathroom and a phone) but sometimes there’s just a mattress on the garage floor. Your only interaction with the staff at the hotel is either via phone conversations or a slit in the wall, where the hotel staff place beer, food or condoms (which may or may not be included in the price of the room).

Although Auto hotels have a sleazy reputation because of the prostitutes and adulterers that frequent them, some of the auto hotels actually look pretty classy. And they’re cheaper than the average cost of a bed in hostel dormitory too. I was reading in the Lonely Planet though that if you show up in a group or with a member of the same sex, they might not let you stay. Mexicans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans don’t use Auto Hotels for cheap travel accommodation, only for cheap sex.

Auto hotels are a lot like the ‘Love Hotels’ that you can find in Japan and Korea (it’s borrows the exact same concept except love hotels are more technologically-advanced and there’s not the same negative stigma attached). You can often pay for your hotel stay via a vending machine in the lobby and hotel rooms come in different themes. They even have a Christmas-themed love hotel in Osaka where your stay comes with complementary Santa pyjamas.

Hotel Little Chapel Christmas. Photo Source

You probably couldn’t find two places in the world more different than Japan and Guatemala and yet when it comes to creative solutions to the problem of live-in in-laws and thin bedroom walls, they’re surprisingly similar.

The 999th Reason Why I Hate Kanji

Reannon Muth — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:58:00 +0000

I woke up this morning at seven, stepped into the shower, and sleepily pushed the button that turns on the hot water heater.

Or so I thought.

Suddenly the bathroom erupted into chaos. Sirens blared, an automated computer voice started shouting instructions at me through the vent over the bathtub and I screamed in terror.

Apparently the button located near the hot water heater wasn’t outlined in pink because it symbolized ‘heat’, but because it was the emergency call button. I’d just unwittingly notified the doorman, the receptionist and possibly the police, that I was having a heart attack in the bathtub.

Niiice

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, But Reannon, how could you have not known that was the kanji for ‘call’?

I know. I know. It’s so obviously a picture of a one-legged man holding a baby and hopping away from an erupting volcano. I mean, clearly. I don’t know how I ever misinterpreted that to be anything other than ‘call for help.’

The only thing I can in say my defense was that I was still half asleep, which is also really the only logical explanation for what happened next.

I could hear the intercom buzzing so I grabbed a towel and dashed towards the front door and was confronted with a flashing, beeping, vibrating intercom system with no less than 10 buttons, all of which were labeled in kanji.

Damn.

I did what I normally do in these types of situations and I panicked. I punched every button, pausing for a second after each one to shout: ‘moshi moshi!’ into the microphone.

I like to think that if I’d been more awake or less frantic I would have stopped before hitting the bright orange button baring this symbol:

It’s a man with an afro standing next to a tee pee…and they’re both on fire!

But as it happened, I wasn’t and so I didn’t.

Yes, I set off the fire alarm.

Cue an intense moment of cursing as I stood in my bath towel and noted the sprinkler system and the sea of fancy electronic equipment below it. A flat screen TV, a Mac laptop, a DVD player and a playstation. And none of them belonged to me because this wasn’t my apartment. I’d been entrusted with the responsibility of safe-guarding my friend’s bazillion dollar Roppongi mansion with explicit instructions to ‘not set the place on fire’…and I was about to do quite the opposite; drown it in a flood of water.

“Moshi, moshi! I yelled into the intercom. “It was a mistake!”

Damn. I forgot the Japanese word for mistake. “Misutaiku!” I yelled, pronouncing the English word with a Japanese accent.

“Chotto Matte (Just a moment),” came the reply. And then the line went dead. And two minutes later, there was a knock on the door.

I only had enough time to quickly rearrange my towel back into place before I watched in horror as the front door clicked open and in walked a police officer.

Talk about embarrassing. Not only do I have to be ‘that idiot gajin who can’t read’ but I have to be caught wearing nothing but a towel with sopping wet hair and ugly mascara tracks running down my cheeks.

Funnily enough, this has happened to me twice before. I once hit the emergency call button while looking for the ‘flush’ button in a subway station bathroom and I hit it another time while looking for the ‘open’ button to release the automatic door in a restaurant bathroom. I blame those experiences for why I’m now ueber paranoid about using public toilets.

After both incidences, I swore that I’d never make that same mistake again…and I went home that night, looked up the kanji characters in my textbook and committed them to memory.

Or…so I thought.

I’ve Got Friends in High Places…

Reannon Muth — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:33:00 +0000

I’ve moved up in the World, folks. Quite literally. I’m now living (well, for two weeks anyway) in a deluxe apartment on the 21st floor of a sky rise in Roppongi.

Here’s a picture of the view from the balcony.

Yep, that’s the Tokyo tower in the distance.

God, I think that the second best thing to being fantastically wealthy is having friends who are fantastically wealthy and who go on vacation to New York and let you housesit for them. I feel like little orphan Annie. : )

“I know I’m gonna like it here
Used to room in a tomb
Where I’d sit and freeze
Get me now, holy cow
Could someone pinch me please.”

- From the Musical Annie