Eldrich Rebello's personal website

Tag: travel

  • Past Lives – Layers of complexity

    Past Lives is a 2023 romantic drama film focused on the literal past life of a Korean immigrant child in North America. The central plot line is how this child’s parents decide to leave South Korea for Canada, how the protagonist then moves to the USA for professional success, finds it, finds love and in between, reconnects with her childhood sheetheart, disconnects and then is forced to reconnect and examine their relationship.

    I will not review the film nor post spoilers. I will take another angle – the angle visible to someone who is themself an immigrant, or a double or triple immigrant depending on how you define it. The movie’s protagonist claims to have immigrated twice, first to Canada and then to the USA. I immigrated from India to Bahrain, then to India, then Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands and finally Canada.

    These moves taught me some simple truths – home is a state of mind but for some, that is intertwined with a location. Any relationship takes effort – love, friendship, siblings, parents, children. Those are thoughts for another time.

    Your name is an integral part of who you are. Not just your name, but the names your friends use. I have one legal name but several nicknames. Some friends know me as Fish. Others as Elda. Others as simply Eldrich. Each has a different connotation in my mind, a different emotion. It is much the same in the film – Na Young becomes Nora. A new name for a new life. One can pretend that your old name ceased to exist, but it doesn’t.

    Another is language. Yes, I am fluent in English but I do not speak the same English with everyone. In Canada, I stick to standard English with metaphors borrowed from cricket and football. With my friends from Bombay, I still use English but with a sauce of Hindi and a seasoning of Marathi words. With yet others in Bombay I speak English but end every sentence with “men”, similar to the Caribbean “mahn”. The inflection is also entirely different. What I say, what I mean, the phrasing, the cadence, they all change with language. Even more different is my speech in Hindi where I use English vocabulary as a crutch until I figure out what the Hindi word for encyclopedia is. (it is ज्ञानकोश or gyan-kosh; विश्वकोश or vishwa-kosh according to Collins).

    At one point, the character of Nora remarks how marriage is like two trees in the same pot. Their roots intertwine and this leads to conflict. How you deal with that conflict is important.

    Another theme in the film is the desire to outgrow your past, to not be bound by it. I too feel this sometimes. You cannot deny your past, it is forever there but it was a moment in time. A moment that has passed, with people who likely changed. You, too, changed.

    Then there is ethnicity and how it means different things in the new world versus in the old world. I am Indian. I cannot change that. Lots of people in Canada are ethnically Indian however, they are distinct from me in an important way – they are Indian AND Canadian. Both at the same time. I am not and never will be despite official documents saying otherwise. I am Indian Indian. From India, fresh off the plane, with an Indian accent and many Indian sensibilities. In the new world, cultures are often reduced to the occasional festivity, the odd piece of cultural baggage, the archaic if baseless custom, aromas in a kitchen or restaurant. In the old world, an ethnicity is who you are, your identity, your role in the world. It is how you behave, how you are expected to behave. Your ethnicity is your culture, how you carry yourself, the food you eat, the ingredients you buy, where you live. It is a curiously new-world phenomenon that your ethnicity and nationality can be distinct and different. Separate, compartmentalised, changing with the date. On diwali, you are Punjabi. Canadian on Christmas.

    Finally, your past home, your homeland, the motherland. As a first-generation migrant, you never really leave it and it never leaves you. Your relationship to it is different depending on circumstance. Some – like Syrians or Sri Lankans – have a tortured, fractious relationship with the mother country. A civil war, ethnic tensions, decades of dysfunction mean that not much of their lives are left there. A clean break for some, a swift detachment for others. In the other case – such as mine – life in the mother country goes on without you. Those you left behind carry on in peace, living their lives without you and you without them. India is not at war, there is no conflict and a large section of my extended family continue to live there. I visit them occasionally but it is a strained visit. They have changed. India has changed. My recollection of the country, of the city, of my neighbourhood is no longer reality. It was but a moment in time. A past life, maybe?

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  • nanoblock – The Japanese micro-sized building blocks

    L – A Gacha-gacha rocket from the Miraikan science museum in Tokyo.

    R – The assembled E233 Tokyo metro car

    At the Toronto Anime North convention in 2022, I discovered nanoblock, the micro-sized building blocks made by a Japanese company called Kawada. They are small enough to be fiddly and unstable but give you tremendous satisfaction when you assemble them into a more concrete whole.

    I was slightly taken aback by the prices – most sets are around fifteen Canadian dollary-doos. Remember that I am taken aback by any price that is not zero – after all, I am Indian. I bought two at the nanoblock store in Tokyo Skytree – admittedly, not the cheapest location.

    One set was a model of the E233 trainset developed by Japanese train company JR East. The model I have is blue, to match the colours of the Keihin–Tōhoku line in Tokyo.

    I decided to capture the building process in a time-lapse video. My YouTube game is weak, hence why there are few edits and the thumbnail is vertical. Both unforgivable errors. Straight to jail.

    A second model that W purchased for me was of the N700 Shinkansen. Another timelapse video is below. The interesting aspect of these designs is that you can combine individual models into a train set. I love that!

  • Japan #4 – Trains – Tokyo, Kansai, Bento and the Shinkansen

    Eldrich Rebello

    Japan loves trains. Many stations have a jingle or a melody that plays as trains arrive and depart. There is a culture of tetsudou (train) otaku – people so obsessed with a hobby that it defines their personality – in this case, trains. There are shops where you can exchange your yen, dollars and rupees for model trains, model tracks, even model people for your model train stations. Trains are everywhere, train stations are destinations and trains are indeed a major part of Japanese life.

    A selection of Japanese trains at the Kyoto Railway Museum https://www.kyotorailwaymuseum.jp/en/

    No surprise then that the first high-speed rail line ws built in Japan in the 1960s. The technology behind most trains is ancient, as is the Shinkansen – the bullet trains. Riding them is quite the experience, especially for the North American tourist, where the populace famously traded public transit for “freedom” in the form of manly, testosterone-fuelled, pickup trucks the size and weight of Sherman tanks. Japanese people travel more kilometres annualy by train than even a country like India with some ten times the population. Surprisingly, Japan transports relatively little freight by train – something obvious in hindsight. Less than 1% of Japanese domestic freight travels via rail. I recall seeing one freight train in Hiroshima and people were out in force taking pictures. In contrast, the USA and Canada move enormous quantities of train freight – almost a quarter of the world’s total between them. The North American train isn’t a symbol of freedom, it is a necessary evil, an unwelcome rumble ruining the rustic, rural peace of the countryside. Japanese trains, meanwhile, are literally routed through buildings – see the photo below from Akihabara station in Tokyo.

    A Tokyo Metro train literally on top of a building. Uncertain location although it is definitely the Chūō-Sōbu line, evident from the yellow branding on the train. I believe this is Akihabara.

    The Japanese train is planned around the human experience and every step is made as easy as possible. Exits from train stations are numbered and all signage indicates these numbers. This makes finding the correct exit for your destination a breeze. On the subway, cars are numbered on the platform floor and most stations have a map showing you which car to board in order to be close to an escalator or lift at your destination station. The cherry on top is that all this info is in your favourite mobile navigation application!

    Kuramae station in Kyoto.
    Front (Green Car) of a Shinkansen at Tokyo.
    25 kv catenary system of the Sanyo Shinkansen.
    A collection of images featuring various Japanese trains.

    The Shinkansen experience is similar – whizzing along the Japanese islands at nearly 300 km/hr makes the country so much smaller but also more accessible. Tokyo to Kyoto is around 450 km and takes around five hours by car. In contrast, it is about three hours by the Shinkansen and transit. At the end of your train journey, you arrive in the city centre and connect to a robust local transit network and can reach pretty much anywhere in either region. Why bother with the hassle of a car, insurance, driving and traffic when you can catch Pokemon on your cellphone as someone else pilots the train? This is a strong incentive that drives up transit usage, creates demand for better transit and allows transit operators to maintain and invest in the system. In stark contrast, Guelph to Toronto (both in South West Ontario, the most populous region of Canada) is about 95 km by road and takes around 80 minutes by GO Train running with old, diesel locomotives. Depending on traffic, the same journey is anywhere between one and two hours by road. The GO Kitchener line running through Guelph is yet to be electrified. Once you are in Toronto, the transit system is decent by North American standards. The Shinkansen trains are clean, modern and many have on-board catering. It’s just a nicer experience and having the option is freeing – a notion that many North Americans profess to desire. On a more positive note, GO train service in SW Ontario is expanding and is expected to be two-way, all say service by 2025. Hopefully.

    A Shinkansen train tearing through Himeji station.

    And then there is the Japanese train meal – the ekiben or the “station bento” boxes containing carefully selected foods designed to be enjoyed on board your train. I sampled several varieties and grew to love them. The selection is wide, the quality high and the cost relatively low. Of course, Japan is not a developing country so “low cost” is a relative term but compared to a restaurant meal, an ekiben is affordable. These are not designed for consumption on local trains but rather on longer distance trains – the Shinkansen for example. Most long-distance trains come with a tray at your seat – surprisingly large, I must add – where you can enjoy your ekiben meal. I often chose the varieties without fish although seafood is hard to avoid completely. I sampled Kobe beef, stewed beef, grilled pork, sticky rice, eel (reluctantly), fish roe, lotus root, assorted veggies, different eggs, and many other items. Ekiben are self-contained, complete meals – chopsticks are included and your meal is neatly partitioned. Of course, you provide your own serviettes and trash can. Japan is notorious for having few public bins but not to worry – your long-distance train has several.

    One of the four ekiben i ate.

    Then there is the branding. There is a Hello Kitty Shinkansen featuring bold branding using the famous mouthless feline. Also in existence is a Pikachu train where parents and kids alike can catch Pikachu. Oh and did i mention the novelty trains? There is the FruiTea Fukushima Train with local Fukushima (yes, that Fukushima) produce, the art gallery Genbi Shinkansen, the rural house-themed Oykot train in Nagano… I could go on but you get the idea. Even Finland’s Moomin have a special train in Japan. There is no equivalent train in Finland, the land where the Moomin were created by Tove Jansson.

    In all, the train experience in Japan is enjoyable and most importantly, convenient. It beats road traffic, is quite, reliable and calming. Totally would recommend and I hope more train systems around the world learn the best from this island nation.

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  • Japan #3 – Tokyo, the world’s most populated city and the world’s largest metropolitan economy

    Eldrich Rebello
    The Tokyo Skytree
    Kaminarimon gate, one of two gates to the Sensō-ji shrine in Asakusa
    Tokyo is full of oases of calm, such as this.
    Invisible from the air is the greenery seen here. Yes, the built environment dominates but plants abound.

    Tokyo is a massive city. Its scale, even when seen, is difficult to comprehend. The other similarly-sized city with which I am familiar is Bombay and Bombay is quite a bit smaller than Tokyo. The Tokyo region population is around 32% higher, the GDP is over three times higher as is Tokyo’s land area. Tokyo is also infinitely cleaner and more hygienic than Bombay can ever hope to be and this is cultural, something that takes centuries to shift.

    I arrived in Tokyo and stayed in Asakusa, one of the fifty four subdivisions of the city. Asakusa was historically the entertainment district and my hotel was just across the street from the Bandai Namco offices. Asakusa is easy to reach from Haneda airport. The journey is technically on two metro lines but the same train continues on meaning you don’t even have to get off to change lines. The hotel was small – my room was around fourteen square meters in total, including the toilet. The floor is a tatami mat meaning that the unsuspecting gaijin must remove their outdoor footwear and don the indoor equivalent. Nearby is the Senso-ji jinja (temple) – Tokyo’s oldest and also the golden poo, apparently depicting the head on a mug of beer. Legend has it that the poo was supposed to be installed vertically but locals were not too thrilled and NIMBY-ism led to the structure’s eventual sideways installation. Also visible from my hotel were the Sumida river and the Tokyo Skytree, a 634 meter broadcast and observation tower that’s hard to miss. This is all Asakusa and the surrounding area. I’m telling you this to emphasis a simple point – Asakusa isn’t a particularly central area or distinctive in any way – all of Tokyo is like this.

    From a North American perspective, it is like downtown. If you visit downtown Toronto (I prefer the term ‘center’), you will see that things are close together – businesses, offices, restaurants, apartment towers and so on. There are things not visible from street level including rooftop bars, patios and so on. Once you leave downtown – and this transition is very obvious – things change. Roads are wider, there’s more wasteful single family houses and noise levels drop. Everywhere in Tokyo is downtown. In fact, a lot of old world cities are like this. The city center of Bombay is large, bustling and busy. I lived in the suburbs and right outside every suburban train station in Bombay is another downtown. Think about that – in one city, there are multiple centers. This is the bit that confuses many North Americans. I must confess that in Tokyo, even I was taken aback by the sheer scale of the city, by the diversity of experiences, flavours and choices. There are fewer, large supermarkets and more convenience stores for the things you need frequently. Bombay is exactly like this.

    Tokyo is a megacity but one unlike most others. For one, not a lot of old neighbourhood structures exist as they were flattened during the world wars. There are lots of old buildings and shrines but they are spread out. Most buildings you see from street level were built in the recent decades.

    To give you some sense of scale, there is an aerial image of Tokyo and Mount Fuji that is frequently reposted on Reddit – I copied it below. Visible at the bottom right is the Tokyo Skytree. Notable also is the apparent lack of greenery. This is misleading because Tokyo is full of greenery, just not large trees visible from above like other places. Also missing are the numerous oases of quiet and solitude – the temples, shrines and parks, miraculously insulated from the din of city life.

    Tokyo from the air, looking south. Mount Fuji is in the background. This image circulates on Reddit regularly and I am yet to find a source. I will credit the author once I identify them.

    I spent almost six days in Tokyo and I saw very little. I visited Akihabara, several shops, supermarkets and convenience stores. But Tokyo is so large you can spend a lifetime there and never really see all of it.

    Someday, I will return. Until then, memories and photos will suffice.

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  • Japan #2 – Food – Ramen

    It is I, the owner of this website.

    Eldrich Rebello

    Food is central to life in Japan. Yes, food is essential to life for any human but the Japanese experience is different. Japanese food ranges from the utilitarian restaurants at busy train stations to the exquisitely honed culinary talents at work in a $ 400 per meal Wagyu beef specialty restaurant. It ranges from a simple ramen to a sixteen course breakfast served by Buddhist monks. An entire building in Hiroshima dedicated to a single dish (okonomiyaki – 広島風お好み焼き) to a handful of restaurants in the entire country serving regional cuisines. Not many other cultures that I am familiar with have quite this breadth of food types, preparation styles and regional interpretations. It is quite the experience and I’m glad I was able to partake of some.

    Arrow shows Chukasoba Billiken (中華ソバビリケン) in Asakusa.

    I began right after arriving in Tokyo – soba noodles was my first point of discovery. Of late, I developed a mild allergy of sorts – I eat certain foods and face a bout of explosive diarrhoea, once. Once and done. Which foods trigger it, I am not certain, however I suspect it might be certain preservatives or additives. Soup powders trigger it, as do certain ready-to-eat meals. Sometimes, it is mushrooms and I suspected MSG but can’t prove it. Anyhow, I knew that Japanese cuisine uses a lot of soy, MSG and other ingredients, some of which may upset my intestines. I did not want to tempt the fates so I decided to play it safe and eat right before returning to the hotel. Nervously, I approached a noodle restaurant close to the hotel, in Asakusa. Chūka sobabiriken (中華ソバビリケン) was the place and you can locate them with your favourite map. “Homemade noodles Billiken” is the name in English. I expected it to be good because there were seven stools at the counter, no tables, a brief menu and a Japanese-style ordering machine that ingested currency notes and spat out coins and food tokens. Oh and, all the menus and signs were in Japanese. Evidently, the weary gaijin was not their target audience.

    I arrived at 17:45, fifteen minutes after the evening service commenced. Soba noodles are made of buckwheat and are more firm compared to wheat noodles. I cannot recall trying them before this point and even in the restaurant, I did not realise I ordered soba. Now, I am not big on social media photography and so did not take a picture of my food (a lie, see image below) but I do remember that I enjoyed it immensely. The flavours were simple, clean and bold. This is a stark contrast to the Indian foods I ate as a child – foods where the flavours are a cacophony, much like the country of India itself. My bowl of ramen was also cheap – around ten Canadian dollary-doos, and this too pleased me. My chopstick game is not the best so I struggled a bit eating my noodles, egg and meat but I powered through. I noticed that around two Japanese customers ordered after me and finished before I did. Evidently, they are more adept at consuming noodles than I was but our restauranteurs were unfazed and willing to help. They even helped us with the ticket machines!

    The text above is a lie. I did take a photo of my soba noodles – here it is. As you can see, no mushrooms.

    Besides not having a photo (same lie, repeated), I also forgot what specific dish I ate. In any case, it was a clear soup with pieces of pork, chopped onions, an egg and enoki mushrooms on the side (another lie). The ingredients were top notch and their quality was very obvious. A full day after leaving home, I was glad to find this restaurant and to eat like the locals. I was glad to be full but not bursting. This is yet another aspect I like about Japanese food – the manageable portion sizes. North America is indeed the land of plenty however it is also the land of too much. Too much food, too much wastage. Back in Bombay, I witnessed the poor eating rotting food from dustbins and those mental images are difficult to erase, as is the stench. This may be why I have an aversion to wasting food. The portion sizes in North America are so large that they are one component in the obesity epidemic but also lead to lots of wasted food. In Tokyo, I was all to happy to return an empty bowl to our restaurant staff.

    I will mention two other aspects of Japanese food that I loved – the omnipresent vending machines and the convenience store nibbles. Vending machines are absolutely everywhere and sell everything from sugary drinks to packaged hot coffee, ramen noodles to socks. Those things are a marvel and a lifesaver on a hot day. Convenience stores like 7-Eleven, Lawson and Family Mart aren’t as numerous as vending machines but are almost everywhere and offer many options for pre-cooked food ranging from varieties of onigiri to filled pastries and matcha cakes. If only Canada had more of them. Alas.

    I ate a lot more food through my stay in Japan and I will get to that in subsequent posts.

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  • Japan #1 – General impressions of the country, my interactions and the infrastructure

    Japan is a strange, alien country for a lot of people. Its exports are popular around the world and some generations are more familiar with Japanese manufactured goods and their accompanying, poorly translated text descriptions. Other generations know Japanese cultural exports – anime, manga, J-pop, cinema and video games. Regardless, Japan – from a western viewpoint – is about as culturally far as one can go without too much hassle. Japan is sometimes fetishised, sometimes misunderstood, sometimes adored and often exaggerated to comical dimensions. No doubt, Japan is a very interesting country.

    I looked forward to my trip there, in May 2023, and I had several items on my personal agenda. Shinkansen (high-speed rail), the Suzuka motor racing circuit (host of the Japanese Formula 1 race), Godzilla, Fuji-san, the minute-perfect trains, the Playstation, robots and many others.

    For connoisseurs of international travel, Japan is travel on easy mode. Everything, everywhere is set up for the international traveller. Granted, the assumption is that your language skills include English, Mandarin or Korean but in most cases, things are set up for your success. The global tourism sector took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic and is yet to recover to 2019 levels. Japan is similarly affected. The United Nations’ list of the ten most popular countries by tourist arrivals does not include Japan. UN data puts the number of foreign tourist arrivals (2022) in Japan at around 3.8 million – around 5% of the comparable number in Spain. This was surprising to me because the tourism sector in Japan appears large, active and profitable. The implication – surprisingly – is that most Japanese tourism is domestic. Despite this, many things are geared towards the foreign tourist, something I valued and used fully.

    My perspective on Japan is certainly not Western but it is close. As a child, i unwittingly watched several cartoon shows that were from Japan. They were dubbed in Arabic so I had no clue as to their origin, having discovered the truth only as an adult. I am myself Asian – my ethnic roots trace to India, which is part of Asia. The North American usage of “Asian” refers to ethnicities from East Asia, which is strange although, not entirely surprising. Many North Americans continue to refer to indigenous North Americans as “Indian” despite having access to accurate maps.

    From my perspective, Japan is one of those countries that is simultaneously very familiar and unfamilar. The bustle of a city like Tokyo is similar to that of Bombay. The cleanliness is alien. The crowds are familiar, the absence of the associated stench is not. The misogyny is (unfortunately) familiar, the way it manifests is not – maid cafes, lewd comics sold behind curtains. The conservative society is familiar, the conformist pressure is familiar. Alien to me are the safety-valves for pent-up pressure, the outlets for suppressed creativity. Dear reader, I encourage you to investigate what the Tokyo salaryman gets up to after hours and how gaijins are spoken about behind closed doors.

    I enjoyed my time in Japan. I love the infrastructure, the roads, the trains, the shinkansen, the attention to detail. I enjoy the manageable portion sizes, the quality of ingredients, the focus on simple flavours. I enjoy the high standards for punctuality, for polite conversation, the respect for public space. I admire the thought put into ensuring equal participation for all – the accessibility at every train station, the man at the ticket turnstile guiding the deaf and blind. I admire Japanese society’s ties to its past, the respect for those who came before while simultaneously aiming for a better future for those yet to come. Japan is truly a remarkable country where many things work and work well. It is a sort of ideal country for someone of my persuasions.

    I would never live there. Japan is a homogeneous society with significant uniformity in thought. Not many Japanese people travel abroad – 2019 saw more Canadian tourists abroad than Japanese. This despite the fact that the population of Japan is three times that of Canada. Japan does not see significant immigration and is famously xenophobic. I observed the number of Nepali restaurants in Tokyo and wondered how bad things are in Nepal that Nepalis are driven to the famously insular Japan, of all countries. Japanese society also has a problem with misogyny. Set your smartphone’s location to Japan and notice that you cannot disable the camera shutter sound. Why, you wonder? The uncomfortable truth is the tendency of many Japanese men to capture unsolicited and invasive upskirt pictures of Japanese women. Japan also has a complicated relationship with its own past, especially the horrors the state committed and the symbolism attached to historical imagery – see the rising sum flag controversy as one example.

    Japan is a complicated country and I knew this. During my stay, I tried to get a sense of what life there is like. My stay was not guided and I ventured both on and off the tourist path. It was certainly memorable and I look forward to visiting again.