Asia Trip Report

I went to Asia! Specifically, I visited Delhi, for business, and Tokyo, for fun. Though I was in Delhi for ten days, they were mostly dedicated to work except for nights and one weekend. I only stayed in Tokyo for two and a half days. So I actually didn't have much time to explore, but I'll retell what I can.

India

After a grueling 24-hour trip over the Pacific to Indira Gandhi International Airport, I was scooped up by a taxi driver to be taken to the hotel in Noida. The hourlong drive that followed was one of the most eye-opening experiences of the entire journey. I'm generally not a big fan of car rides, whether I'm driving or being driven. In the U.S., any drive longer than 20 minutes would put me into a torpor. Delhi roads, on the other hand, were surging with life. Cars, motorcycles, bicycles, rickshaws, street vendors, and cows jostled with little heed for lanes, or safety in general. Lumbering trucks were hand-painted in bright, ornate designs, like something taken out of a Mad Max set. The honking was incessant, but I quickly learned that leaning on the horn is necessary to assert your dominance and avoid being crushed by more assertive vehicles.

I mostly used cabs to get around, and each of the drivers exhibited considerable skill and dexterity in navigating the fray on the streets. A particularly memorable experience was a nighttime drive from Agra to Delhi along the expressway after spending the day walking around Taj Mahal and Agra Fort. Our leisurely trip was suddenly interrupted by a barricade spanning all northbound lanes. A few cops guarding the barrier slouched in folding chairs. Taking the hint, we took the nearby off-ramp into a maze of dark, narrow roads. At first, our progress was slowed by a convoy of large trucks at the front, but our driver eventually managed to slip past them with some well-timed acceleration and frantic flicking of the highbeams. However, we soon just became plain lost, and the driver had to stop to extract some directions from a local with passionate argument and gesticulation. One of the other cabbies that trailed us lost his patience and took a shortcut through the brush to make a beeline for the highway. Finally, after a liberal dose of Google Maps and short jaunt through an idle construction site, we returned to the main road and arrived safely home.

Besides the swirling traffic, I was also enraptured by the skyline of the National Capital Region. Newer regions of the city are dominated by towering offices and apartments in various stages of construction. Many huge concrete skeletons mostly sat idle without any worker crews or equipment in sight. A particularly spectacular example was the SuperTech SuperNova complex (http://www.supertechlimited.com/residential/supernova-noida/index.asp) that I passed by every day on my way to and fom the office. The sheer number and size of the structures made some areas feel post-apocalyptic. Through conversations with coworkers and cab drivers, I learned that many of these projects either ran out of money in the middle of construction or were halted by lawsuits from former landowners who felt cheated out of their property.

When I wasn't on the road, I was busy managing the never-ending stream of edibles that my hosts supplied me with. At first, I was eager to devour anything almost anything, but I almost immediately met my match in the mess hall below the office where my teammates worked. My unsuspecting gastrointestinal tract didn't stand a chance. That night, I realized why there was a phone mounted by the toilet in my hotel room at the Holiday Inn. Westerners must spend a lot of time in that general location.

I apologize if I'm giving you a impression of India. In truth, I had a fantastic experience, and that's to my hosts. Every person I interacted with, hotel staff, cab drivers, tour guides, and others, tirelessly worked to make my trip enjoyable. My coworkers, some of whom I had collaborated with remotely for over four years, were especially gracious. They accompanied me on sightseeing excursions, invited me into their homes, and gifted me delectable Indian sweets. More than the driving, food, monuments, or anything else, it was the people that I met that made my visit memorable.

Japan

I landed in Tokyo in the evening. After wrestling with ATMs and ticket machines that resembled oversized GameBoys, I obtained a bus pass to Shinjuku. I was thinking that the vehicle would be a standard, low-ride city bus with handlebars and not enough seats, but I was pleasantly surprised. A gleaming charter bus with a full deck of soft padded seats sat idling at the curb. Signage at the front reminded passengers to put out their cigarettes, silence their cell phones, and refrain from talking loudly (these were rules also enforced on the trains). Friendly attendants took suitcases to stow at the bottom and gave out luggage receipts. As the bus pulled away, they bowed respectfully.

The quiet, uneventful ride brought me to Shinjuku Station at around 10:30 PM. I had assumed that at this hour the daily rush would have died down and navigation would be effortless. Instead, I walked straight into rapid currents of commuters running between about a dozen different entrances and ticket gates. Panicking and disoriented, I had no choice but to clutch my luggage close and let myself be carried by the flow, jumping between streams of people to avoid getting trapped in gates without a ticket. Eventually, I sought refuge in a distant corner from which I could spot some ticket machines. I regained my breath and resumed surfing through the crowds towards them. Precious seconds ticked by as I struggled to decipher the system map (all in Japanese) and calculate the exact fare. The fun didn't end there, however. I then aimed myself at appropriate gate, carefully positioning my right hand so that I could feed the ticket into the slot and pick it up without breaking race-walking pace and incurring the wrath of the commuters behind me. On the platform, new trains arrived one after the other to eject and load hundreds of passengers each in the span of about 15 seconds. It took me another few minutes of huddling against a column and examining the labels on the trains to build up the confidence to submerge myself into the flow again. I finally stumbled into the lobby of my hotel as though I had weathered a howling blizzard.

I had reserved a spot at a capsule hotel for a truly genuine Japanese experience. I quickly realized, though, that except for the technologically-advanced toilets, the living conditions were very similar to a college dormitory. Males and females had separate floors and elevators, the bathrooms were shared, and the sleeping pods were about the size and shape as the bunk I was assigned as an undergrad. There was even a burst of activity every morning due to the designated cleaning hours in the middle of each day during which guests were required to vacate the premises, but it felt instead like students were rushing to lectures. Despite that, the facilities were comfortable enough for my weary limbs at the end of each exciting day.

Besides biking between shrines and temples throughout the city and meeting co-workers for lunch, I spent most of my time aimlessly wandering around the Shinjuku and Akihabara districts. Dazzling neon signs outside advertised hobby shops of every interest imaginable, massage parlors that were definitely for more than just massages, and arcades the likes of which I had never seen before. One of my favorite physical locations as a child was Nickel City, but that was a dingy basement compared to what I experienced here. Crane machines were filled with all sorts of rare enthusiast merchandise, like stuffed anime dolls, elaborate figurines, and cosplay accessories. The video games, though, were even more impressive. In addition to joysticks, machines featured more elaborate input mechanisms, like laser pens and capacitive touchscreens. One game was controlled by what looked like a giant glowing crystal jutting out of the front. Another had a large flat mat on which players could move trading cards around on face-down to control a real-time strategy game on the screen. The dancing machines were similarly advanced. Instead of the standard 4- to 8-button layout, dancers broke out crazy moves on fully analog platforms that glowed with LEDs.

When the time came to pack up of my souvenirs and trek back down to Haneda Airport to begin the long journey back home, I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of Indian and Japanese culture. Even less of made it into this post, partly due to my procrastination in preparing this retelling. It is now my personal goal to return to Asia with a notepad at the ready and to come back with a much more detailed account.