The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma - Thant Myint-U

The author of this book is an American writer of Burmese descent. His grandfather was a colleague and close friend of the heroes of Burmese independence and the Secretary-general of the UN from 1962 to 1971. Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was a frequent guest at his family's house in New York, before the 1988 uprising.

Haiku - Various authors

Haiku used to be the name of the first stanza of the Japanese ancient poems. It finally became itself a literary category. The shortest form of poetry, a haiku is always composed of three verses: five, seven and five syllables each.

Haruki Murakami - After the quake

This is a collection of short stories. Every story takes place few days or weeks after the terrible Kobe earthquake of 1995. Each one of them is based in a different Japanese place, though none in Kobe itself.

The rape of Nanking - Iris Chang

Nowadays what happened in Nanking (current name: Nanjing) on the eve of WWII, when the Japanese army invaded the city, looted it, killed and raped hundreds of thousands - children and elderly alike - is a very well established, known and discussed fact. But up until the mid ’90s it had been swept under the carpet of history, quite unbelievably, given the prominence of the sides involved and the magnitude/typology of the tragedy.
Iris Chang’s book is one of the main sources of the limelight that was suddenly and belatedly shed on the event.

凍りついた香り Kōritsuita kaori (Italian: Profumo di Ghiaccio) - Ogawa Yoko

I don’t think there is an English translation of this book. At least I couldn’t find one, even searching the web. That’s why I’m mentioning the Italian title next to the Japanese one. If there really isn’t a translation of this novel in the most important language in the world, well, that’s a pity. This story is a good example of the peculiar Japanese fondness for details, surgical change of pace, tactfulness, delicacy and melancholy. Even of their atavistic tendency for seppuku or harakiri.  

The diving pool - Ogawa Yoko

This is a collection of three short stories, novellas actually. Each story has a young woman as the main character. The first one is watching closely her childbearing older sister, the second one is visiting the boarding house where she used to live as a student - now almost empty - and the third one is experiencing a life crisis at the orphanage managed by her parents, where she also grew up.

Chinese Cinderella - Adeline Yen Mah, Mao's last dancer - Li Cunxin

Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society is one of five books that I picked up from the Chinese literature section of a second hand bookstore in Bangkok. While reading the introduction I found out that it is categorized as children fiction. I was about to drop it, then I decided to give it a try. Well, if this is a novel for children, then nowadays children are very lucky! I read it all. Though I am a bit of a history buff and I have spent quite some time in China and Shanghai, where most of the characters live, reading this book I’ve learned a few things I didn’t know or I had forgotten.

Possibly the best war museum I've seen - Nanjing, China

300000 victims in just one city 

We get off the train at Nanjing central station, take a quick look at Google Maps and get on the subway to Yunjinlu station. After misinterpreting the station area map we end up at the Silk and brocade museum. We understand straight away that we've made a mistake, nonetheless we take a jolly little walk among silkworms, looms and robes. At the end of it we get out again under the Central-Eastern China scorching sun and enter the right museum, the Nanking massacre one. The structure spreads over a number of air-conditioned halls and an outdoor area (more suffering, it would've been much better to come here in spring). The visitors can walk among commemorative sculptures and installations, reconstructions, bunkers, authentic (and rather grim) mass graves unearthed many years after the events took place and an amazing photo exhibition that I recommend you leave as the last part of your visit. 
Obviously, in order to focus on the real value of the exhibition, one has to scratch the inevitable bombast glaze that coats the whole thing and overlook for a few hours the Chinese government exploitation of the historical events (and the subsequent hatred against the Japanese) for slimy regional supremacy purposes. Beautiful sentences of the "forgivable, but not forgettable" type can sound rather shallow in this context. 
This is no doubt one of the best war museums I've seen though. Those in Hanoi and Saigon can also sport first class exhibits but the buildings that house them and the general care for details are definitely of a much lower level. At the Nanjing museum quality encompasses a number of different aspects: architectural, artistic, historical and documentary. And if that were not enough the admission is totally free, for everyone. If you happen to be anywhere in Eastern China (especially in Shanghai or the surrounding region) I strongly recommend you pay a visit to it

A few more photos:

When in Rome...wash your ass as the Romans do - with photo gallery

My friend LMB's Florentine bidet

I've often happened to hear some Italians complaining after finding out that in some country there is no such a thing as a bidet, something that made them wonder whether people there wash their asses or not after taking a shit.
Well, as a matter of fact in some places they don't. They use a lot of toilet paper, they scratch and scratch, then throw and throw, until the last piece of paper they've used doesn't show any of those typical brownish skid marks we all know so well. Unfortunately sometimes they have to scratch so much that the vanishing of the shit residue is matched by a simultaneous appearance of blood traces. The skin of the sandpapered area is in fact quite sensitive.

However, sometimes the lack of a bidet doesn't necessarily mean that in that place people don't actually wash their butt before standing up from the bowl. I'd like to emphasize the word before. In Italy in fact - or anywhere bidets are commonly used - we have to stand up, take a couple of steps, turn around and sit down again, on a ceramic surface by the way, which, lacking any sort of plastic cover, can become annoyingly cold. Bidets in facts are not necessarily the best solution to a dirty ass issue.

The solitary traveler's nightmare/1 - Tokyo, Japan

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli, 1781

What is the most common nightmare of a person who travels alone, far from home, in an unknown place, where people speak another language and think in a different way, a country with alien customs, traditions, values and laws? Is it being assaulted in a filthy and dark alley by a gang of kids, high on crack, with bulging and wet eyes, empty bellies, holding shiny blades in their hands? Or that someone slips two hundred grams of heroin into your bag, a few meters away from the customs, in a country where drug dealing is punished with death penalty? Or perhaps it is boarding a flight of a secondary carrier in a developing country and starting to notice creaking, squeaking, vibrations, failures and draughts when the hatches have already been locked? Or will it be running into a group of armed rebels in a desert area, a hundred kilometers away from the nearest town?

Not for me. Not that I am what you would call an intrepid globetrotter but this kind of misfortunes - maybe because I haven't personally experienced any of them - seem quite unlikely to happen to me.

The nightmare that can cover my forehead with beads of cold sweat, my inexhaustible source of panic, the only reason why I might not want to hang around alone or out of my customary routes, what really frightens me most is the thought of being in a restaurant and after having ordered my dinner - just when I'm about to relax, looking forward to tasting one of my favorite dishes - realizing that I don't have even a cent with me.

It happened to me twice. The first time in Japan, in the outskirts of Tokyo, fortunately not far from where I was staying. That time I managed to finish a whole bowl of beef and rice before putting a hand in my pocket only to fish out the hope to possess a bundle of Yens. As it's often the case in Japan, the cook/waiter/cashier who was standing behind the counter at which I was sitting couldn't speak a word in English: he was just looking at me with a baffled expression while he kept chopping his vegetables with a large knife. I rummaged through my bag and I thanked my good luck when I found my passport inside. I handed it to him and with theatrical and slow gestures I tried to explain that I would be back in no time. 

I got home without breathing, I grabbed all the money I could find and I rolled down the stairs. When I entered the restaurant I was purple-faced, soaked with sweat and on the verge of dying of asphyxia, holding a tangled mass of Yens as if it was a relay baton. After I paid, the cook, with the impassible expression of a Kabuki mask, laid down the machete, took my passport from under the table and gave it back to me.

I gave him my passport, I kept thinking while I was walking. My passport...well, in Japan you can trust them, here at least. But then I was at that again: I gave him my passport, my passport...well, if you don't trust somebody even in Japan, then...how could I do that, my passport...

Continued on another post...

A new breed - Mae Hong Son, Thailand

Japanese bridge, Pai, by Fabio

September 2001. The Twin Towers collapsed a few days ago, as well as my prospect of a solid career, a secure job, promotions, a guaranteed salary, a pension at the end and all the things like that. When I say collapsed I mean that I tore it down with my own hands, not that it came down by itself or that someone else helped me to demolish it.

Let's not stray from the point though. September 2001, we were saying. I've just landed in Asia, determined to visit as big a portion of it as I can before my savings run out. The road that connects Chiang Mai and Pai is the same thin and winding path marked by the Japanese along the hills and the valleys of Mae Hong Son province during the second world war. Pai is starting to develop: there are a few guest houses, some agencies that organize trekking tours and rent bicycles, a number of restaurants and a couple of bars with Siamese cowboys playing live country and folk tunes. Waves of Thai tourists will start to flood this small town in a few years, for the moment only a few dozen foreigners a day arrive. And they do it by means of a run down micro-bus, probably built to accommodate baby midgets, gaudy colored and rusty, loud, burning-hot and full like a constipated bowel. The air-conditioned minivan service doesn't exist yet, let alone the small airplanes that land nearby nowadays. Unless you have a car or a motorbike the Playmobil bus is the only option available. The foreign passengers are mingling with a disproportionate number of Thais, who are not Thais in the real sense of the word, as almost all of them belong to the various minorities that inhabit the area: Shan, Karen, Akha, Lisu, Lahu. They are divided - or united - by sacks of rice, food, boxes of electrical appliances and utensils, poultry, fish and other mysterious objects. The one-and-a-quarter-person-seats are accommodating three-four people on average and the standard-sized foreigners have to find a way to handle the uncomfortable presence of their own knees. Others are sitting on a sort of big scorching bench that covers some mechanical parts of the bus, right next to the driver. The remaining ones are cramming the aisle.

I offer my seat to a woman overwhelmed with a huge basket that she carries on her shoulder as if it was a school-bag. Smiles and compliments are flooding me. It's low cost popularity, luxury that one can indulge on just in situations like this. After a while the bus starts to sputter, it slows down, then catches up, coughs again, jumps and halfway through a rather steep slope it finally comes to a stop. The driver is working hard on the ignition system and the starter is assisting him by screaming out loud, trying to wake the engine up, but there is nothing to do, the latter is deaf. We have to get off and considering the temperature, space and smell related issues none of the foreigners really take it badly. The locals, as it often happens in Asia, endure the events without any noticeable changes of facial expression. After half an hour though, the initial relief gives way to some puffs, that in a few minutes turn into outright restlessness. Then something happens. A Japanese pick up drives by, the only Thai tourist around (with hindsight I should call him a pioneer) stops it, asks for a lift and then waves to the bunch of people behind him. A dozen foreigners manage to find a place on the truck that a few seconds later has already disappeared behind a switchback. The ones who were left behind got the trick and are planning to stop the next car. I'm stunned by the heat and the cramps and I haven't decided whether I'm going to stay here or follow them. As usual I postpone the decision and I wait for something or someone to give me a cue. The oracle presents itself under the appearance of Makoto, a Japanese guy, all smiles, energy and clear ideas. Ten seconds next to him work better than a jar of Redbull. 
"I'm definitely gonna stay. Can you see how they are working hard to repair the bus and take us to Pai? I can't possibly leave them like this!" 
For a moment I don't react, then the power of the sentence and the purpose hits me like a Mike Tyson's punch. I think that it would be nice to start crying when facing this kind of demonstrations of humanity, but this doesn't seem to be the most appropriate situation, so I opt for a smile. 
"Well then, I'll stay as well. There's no hurry, nobody is waiting for me..." 
It doesn't take long to fix the problem and in a couple of hours we're already in Pai.

Normally, when we think of stereotypes, negative images tend to occur to us. Italians are cunning fellows, Germans are boring, French are snobbish, Japanese are credulous tourists who take photos of everything. Well, Makoto represents a stereotype of Japan that I'm crazy about. Sticking to an idea, to a principle, not necessarily related to politics or nationalism but, as in this case, to human solidarity, good manners, gratitude, understanding and compassion. Resisting temptations, avoiding easy ways, not making excuses, even when dealing with oneself. Maybe it's a legacy of the samurai culture, or at least that's how I like to think of it. And all of this is always accompanied by smiles and positiveness. That's why after five seconds of bewilderment I was almost moved to tears. 

The Great Makoto. We'll continue traveling together for a few days. He's the one who will organize a mini-party at a restaurant for my birthday, involving the waitresses who will contribute with a succulent and colorful fruit platter, free of charge. And he's the one who will make me laugh again when, on his way back from a rush to the toilet of a bus station, breathless, panting, the forehead covered with beads of sweat, holding his belly while his mouth was twisted in grimaces of pain, to apologize for the delay he will come up with: "Sorry Fabio...it was an e-me-ru-gen-cyyy!"

The Great Makoto, exceptional stereotype. Representative for South East Asia of a new breed of samurai.

Mae Hong Son province, Thailand, September 2001