This week, while reeling from the onslaught of minor crises that's part and parcel of the last days of school, Nana and I decided to try some melon milk we found at the Daiei, our go-to supermarket.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Melon Milk: Justin & Nana Drink Weird Stuff for Your Entertainment
They're big on flavored milk here in Asia. Besides the classic chocolate milk and the not-too-out-there caramel milk, you can also find fruit milks flavored with apple, peach, and even melon.
This week, while reeling from the onslaught of minor crises that's part and parcel of the last days of school, Nana and I decided to try some melon milk we found at the Daiei, our go-to supermarket.
No doubt about it: the container is prominently marked with the katakana for melon. However, we weren't 100% certain this would be melon milk rather than melon yogurt, as the bottle was right on the border between the milk and yogurt sections.
It was milk, after all.
Not bad, in fact. A bit rich for an actual drink, as I can't imagine it going well with any food (except, maybe, melon), but it made a pretty good snack.
This week, while reeling from the onslaught of minor crises that's part and parcel of the last days of school, Nana and I decided to try some melon milk we found at the Daiei, our go-to supermarket.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Cost of Living in Japan
Japan is widely seen as an expensive place to live. Sure enough, Japan isn't cheap, but so far, Nana and I haven't found life here to be all that expensive.
So why the gap between expectation and reality? I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head, some of them particular to me and Nana, some of them particular to Fukuoka, and some of them general to the experience of picking up and moving somewhere new.
1. Location
When people say Japan, they often mean Tokyo. And Tokyo is expensive. However, outside of the big four (Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya), most cities in Japan are pretty reasonable.
According to these surveys, for instance, only Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya rank in the 150 most expensive cities in the world. That puts most Japanese cities well below moderately expensive American cities like St. Louis and even some reputedly inexpensive cities like, say, Pittsburgh.
Of course, those surveys are specifically geared to measure cost of living for expats, and if you care to click through, they have some serious methodological flaws. But still, when you think of cost of living for a small Japanese city like Fukuoka, it's roughly in the same ballpark as small-to-medium American cities.
2. Lifestyle
Often, when people consider living in another place, they think about what it would cost to replicate the literal trappings of life in their old home. In other words, Americans imagine what it would cost to buy (and own) a three-bedroom detached home, two cars (preferably gas guzzlers), and twenty gallons of gas a week. If they're really digging into the details, they'll also look at the cost of a burger, or a pizza, or a beer.
What they should be asking, however, is how much it would cost to replicate a similar level of comfort. In Japan, for instance, you don't need a car, let alone two, to get where you want to go when you want to go there: the trains and buses are reliable, and if the weather's nice you can just bike. And while an American-style meal will make a dent in your wallet, cheap Japanese food and groceries abound.
3. Healthcare
This one's simple: in Japan, as in almost anywhere else in the world, healthcare is dirt cheap compared to what Americans pay. (Here and in Korea, it's even pretty decent healthcare!) While for privacy reasons I don't want to go into details, my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that we're paying about 10% of what we paid for similar coverage when we were living in Washington, DC.
4. Taxes
In many countries, foreigners pay taxes at a lower effective rate than locals. I still have yet to figure out why this is. This effect is less pronounced the longer you live in Japan, with an especially big jump around year three, when the residence tax kicks in.
5. Education
Simply put, we don't have to pay to educate a family. You can get your kids a public school education in Japan for next to nothing, but by American standards it's a pretty miserable education. (Seriously. Don't believe what you read about Japanese schools.) Private school, on the other hand, is exorbitantly expensive, with yearly tuition that's often in line with private colleges in America.
6. It's All Relative!
It's actually been a really long time since Nana and I lived anywhere you could consider cheap. We went from college in Connecticut to a year in D.C. to two years in Seoul to a year in Edinburgh. Of all of those places, D. C. was where we had the smallest apartment. Next to that, our little place in Fukuoka seems pretty spacious!
7. Language: The Reverse Foreigner Tax
In Korea, Nana and I often complained about the "foreigner tax," which was our term for the extra money expats had to pay to get stuff done simply because we lacked the language skills to figure out the cheapest, most effective way. (This also covered times when we were flat out ripped off.)
But there's also a kind of reverse foreigner tax at work: you end up spending less because you don't know the language. So many leisure costs are tied to language-based activities. Here, though, we don't really go to the movies, we don't have a TV or a cable subscription, we don't buy a lot of music, and so on. We read, hang out, go to the beach if the weather's nice--all free activities used to replace expensive habits in the States.
Conclusions
Don't let the headlines scare you. Most of Japan is pretty affordable, and the US is a lot more expensive than people like to think.
(PS: I'm interested in hearing readers' thoughts on this. Am I right? Have I missed something? Oversimplified? Let me know what you think!)
So why the gap between expectation and reality? I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head, some of them particular to me and Nana, some of them particular to Fukuoka, and some of them general to the experience of picking up and moving somewhere new.
1. Location
When people say Japan, they often mean Tokyo. And Tokyo is expensive. However, outside of the big four (Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya), most cities in Japan are pretty reasonable.
According to these surveys, for instance, only Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya rank in the 150 most expensive cities in the world. That puts most Japanese cities well below moderately expensive American cities like St. Louis and even some reputedly inexpensive cities like, say, Pittsburgh.
Of course, those surveys are specifically geared to measure cost of living for expats, and if you care to click through, they have some serious methodological flaws. But still, when you think of cost of living for a small Japanese city like Fukuoka, it's roughly in the same ballpark as small-to-medium American cities.
2. Lifestyle
Often, when people consider living in another place, they think about what it would cost to replicate the literal trappings of life in their old home. In other words, Americans imagine what it would cost to buy (and own) a three-bedroom detached home, two cars (preferably gas guzzlers), and twenty gallons of gas a week. If they're really digging into the details, they'll also look at the cost of a burger, or a pizza, or a beer.
What they should be asking, however, is how much it would cost to replicate a similar level of comfort. In Japan, for instance, you don't need a car, let alone two, to get where you want to go when you want to go there: the trains and buses are reliable, and if the weather's nice you can just bike. And while an American-style meal will make a dent in your wallet, cheap Japanese food and groceries abound.
3. Healthcare
This one's simple: in Japan, as in almost anywhere else in the world, healthcare is dirt cheap compared to what Americans pay. (Here and in Korea, it's even pretty decent healthcare!) While for privacy reasons I don't want to go into details, my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that we're paying about 10% of what we paid for similar coverage when we were living in Washington, DC.
4. Taxes
In many countries, foreigners pay taxes at a lower effective rate than locals. I still have yet to figure out why this is. This effect is less pronounced the longer you live in Japan, with an especially big jump around year three, when the residence tax kicks in.
5. Education
Simply put, we don't have to pay to educate a family. You can get your kids a public school education in Japan for next to nothing, but by American standards it's a pretty miserable education. (Seriously. Don't believe what you read about Japanese schools.) Private school, on the other hand, is exorbitantly expensive, with yearly tuition that's often in line with private colleges in America.
6. It's All Relative!
It's actually been a really long time since Nana and I lived anywhere you could consider cheap. We went from college in Connecticut to a year in D.C. to two years in Seoul to a year in Edinburgh. Of all of those places, D. C. was where we had the smallest apartment. Next to that, our little place in Fukuoka seems pretty spacious!
7. Language: The Reverse Foreigner Tax
In Korea, Nana and I often complained about the "foreigner tax," which was our term for the extra money expats had to pay to get stuff done simply because we lacked the language skills to figure out the cheapest, most effective way. (This also covered times when we were flat out ripped off.)
But there's also a kind of reverse foreigner tax at work: you end up spending less because you don't know the language. So many leisure costs are tied to language-based activities. Here, though, we don't really go to the movies, we don't have a TV or a cable subscription, we don't buy a lot of music, and so on. We read, hang out, go to the beach if the weather's nice--all free activities used to replace expensive habits in the States.
Conclusions
Don't let the headlines scare you. Most of Japan is pretty affordable, and the US is a lot more expensive than people like to think.
(PS: I'm interested in hearing readers' thoughts on this. Am I right? Have I missed something? Oversimplified? Let me know what you think!)
Monday, May 30, 2011
Look On My Curtains, Ye Mighty, And Despair
Occasionally I suffer from urges of a kind not stereotypically experienced by heterosexual males. A couple weeks ago, for instance, I was overcome with a sudden loathing for our curtains. Inspired by my recent ode to the Manila Airport Hotel, I could not for one minute longer bear to look at the translucent yellow shrouds that hung limply over our windows. They'd already been old and ratty when we moved in back in August, and though we'd mused about replacing them forever, we'd never gotten around to it.
Seeing that this repulsion came upon me at about ten o'clock on a lazy Saturday morning, I did the only thing I could: I roused Nana from her sleep (!) and promptly packed her onto her bicycle for a trip to the Nitori.
Nitori is the Japanese Ikea-meets-Bed-Bath-and-Beyond. It's also probably the most Japanese home furnishings store on the face of the planet. Quick, in your head, picture a Japanese home. That's not what they actually look like--who can really afford the space to hide away all that clutter?--but it is what Nitori makes you think yours can look like, if only you buy that second rattan lampshade and that beige stoneware bowl.
Now, I should tell you that I had never before in my life purchased curtains. I did manage to come armed with measurements (in metric! take that, NASA!), but beyond that, I knew nothing. Which is another way of saying that I wasn't even qualified to buy curtains in English, let alone in Japanese.
Nevertheless, the expedition started out as a success. Nana and I found the curtain section, quickly agreed on a pattern we liked, and grabbed some standard sizes, pre-packaged, that would get the job done. No Japanese required!
It turns out, however, that one of our windows is an odd one--double-width, with an awkward height. The only way we were going to cover it was with a custom job, which meant somehow ordering custom curtains, for delivery, entirely in Japanese, when I have a hard enough time ordering dinner at the ramen place, where the options are pretty much limited to ramen, ramen, dumplings, and ramen.
And yet, when plunged into the searing fire, I emerged anew, forged into that timeless hero among the household gods: Justin, the Custom Curtain Orderer (in Japanese).
I'm still not sure how I did it. It involved a lot of pointing and gesturing, followed by emphatic repetitions of the three-digit numbers I'd learned to say only a couple days before. A flash of my gaijin ID (aka "whitey card") was enough to provide my address, and seeing that I learned to tell time in Japanese a three weeks ago, I was more than apt to the challenge of arranging delivery. I did end up with a Nitori "pointo cardo" I don't recall ever asking for (or wanting), but hey, it was free, and you can't win 'em all.
But most importantly: the curtains are up, and they look pretty good. So now my tortured soul can rest at peace.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The Philippines: More Food!
I seem to be pathologically unable to travel without penning long, pointless blog posts about food. If only there were some way to transmit tastes and smells over the internet, these posts might be marginally interesting to our readers, instead of just rambling and self-indulgent.
Anyway! Here goes.
The produce in the Philippines is absolutely amazing. Not only are the islands home to a significant percentage of the mangoes, pineapples, and bananas eaten around the world, they're also home to a host of other fruits, including varieties of the above, that are hard to find elsewhere.
One of our best meals of the trip was really just a simple showcase of fresh Filipino ingredients. It was in Tagaytay, outside of Manila, at a place called Sonia's (also known for its toilets, apparently).
If you squint enough to see through the dim lighting, you can see chunks of fresh pineapple, mango, and papaya, plus some yellowish slivers of jackfruit, which has a texture sort of like thick artichoke but tastes something like a mix of Asian pear, mango, and banana. And that was just for our salad! Later, we had bread and pasta with various sauces, including sun-dried tomato, pesto made with fresh basil, and green peppercorns in olive oil. Dessert was a plate of banana spring rolls with a side of honeyed sweet potato, capped off with tea made from sprig of tarragon.
Honestly, one of the best meals I can remember. The simple trick? Pretty much everything on the table was grown within walking distance of the restaurant. More easily done in the middle of a tropical paradise, of course.
Sonia's was a great showcase for the natural abundance of the Philippines, but how about actual Filipino cuisine? Well, our lovely host, Beia, and her family treated us to a full Filipino breakfast one morning. Quite a feast:
Fresh fruit featured prominently (that's papaya and mango), with generous helpings of mushroom omelette, corned beef hash, and a local roll called "pandesal." We washed it down with mugs of drinking chocolate.
Nana learned the stabby method for eating the middle slice of a mango . . .
. . . and I discovered the joys of coco jam, which is basically like peanut butter, but made with coconut instead.
Beia's family also hosted us for a family potluck to celebrate the various auspicious occasions we happened to crash.
Here, you can really see the odd fusions of American and Spanish cuisines with the Filipino palate. We have Filipino spaghetti, a stew of red peppers and chicken bits, a kind of spiced meatloaf, and garlic sausages with . . . marshmallows. Tasty, if somewhat puzzling!
Finally, a dash of traditional Filipino cuisine, sampled at a well-known eatery near our friend's place of work.
The centerpiece was a big bowl of simple beef soup (upper left) with a plate of veggies and seafood in Filipino "curry," which is actually a peanut sauce. We also had a side of crispy fried pork rinds in blood sauce. Totally awesome, but too rich for more than a couple bites!
Overall, Nana and I really liked the food we ate in the Philippines. In many parts of Asia, to get a lot of flavor, you have to put up with a lot of spiciness. Not so in the Philippines!
Final verdict? If we lived in the Philippines, we would get HUGE.
*Special thanks to our hosts, Beia and Romel, who found us some awesome stuff to eat!
Anyway! Here goes.
The produce in the Philippines is absolutely amazing. Not only are the islands home to a significant percentage of the mangoes, pineapples, and bananas eaten around the world, they're also home to a host of other fruits, including varieties of the above, that are hard to find elsewhere.
One of our best meals of the trip was really just a simple showcase of fresh Filipino ingredients. It was in Tagaytay, outside of Manila, at a place called Sonia's (also known for its toilets, apparently).
Honestly, one of the best meals I can remember. The simple trick? Pretty much everything on the table was grown within walking distance of the restaurant. More easily done in the middle of a tropical paradise, of course.
Sonia's was a great showcase for the natural abundance of the Philippines, but how about actual Filipino cuisine? Well, our lovely host, Beia, and her family treated us to a full Filipino breakfast one morning. Quite a feast:
Nana learned the stabby method for eating the middle slice of a mango . . .
Beia's family also hosted us for a family potluck to celebrate the various auspicious occasions we happened to crash.
Finally, a dash of traditional Filipino cuisine, sampled at a well-known eatery near our friend's place of work.
Final verdict? If we lived in the Philippines, we would get HUGE.
*Special thanks to our hosts, Beia and Romel, who found us some awesome stuff to eat!
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
My First Male Prom Date
I've been to prom before - three proms, actually. I went to my junior and senior proms, and then went back up to the city where I lived before in Michigan as a senior and did their senior prom, too. In all three of these situations I went with a date, but unfortunately for my high school social life, they were just female friends who paired up with me so we could get the ticket discount. So this was my first prom in which I had a date. Isn't he cute?
The theme of the FIS prom was "Celestial," hence the moon and stars overhead here:
The tables were decorated with star ornaments and cookie cutters. There were cards scattered with pictures of Venus, the Solar System, etc. Justin and I invented a game like War in which you played these cards and won based on whose card had the greatest probability of life - as in, Mars defeats Mercury. If you had a tie (say, Space and Earth, or the Astronaut and E.T.,both at 100) you kept playing until somebody won. If you play Saturn or Jupiter, you get to count the moons. I still think Justin shortchanged Venus. He is so carbon-normative. Give sulfur-based life forms a chance!
Edited to add: Coworker Katherine took this picture of our card game, just in case you thought we couldn't possibly REALLY be nerdy enough to play it. If there is one thing you can learn from this blog, it is never to bet against how nerdy Justin and I can be.
We also had glowsticks. I made a bracelet, then a hat, then a belt, then a belt with a dangly bit, and then a bandolier. Think of me as a four-year-old with marginally better motor skills.
Coworkers Sarah and Tim helped with photography, and these are their pictures above. Their camera suffered a tragic hairline fracture on their trip to Vietnam when the lens got sideswiped by a motorcycle (which, on the other hand, is probably one of the better cocktail party stories about camera problems. Much better than ours, anyway, which involved the zoom lens breaking because Justin kept accidentally turning the camera on while it was in his pocket.) This is me demonstrating genuine, commiseratory sorrow at their loss. Also being the Monopoly Man.
Like two of the U.S. proms I went to, there was a dinner first. Unlike the proms I went to, there was very little dancing and it was over at 10. Think of it more as a senior banquet with a bit of dancing at the end. We had slide shows of senior photos, a great video of friends and former teachers around the world, and musical performances by some juniors. We all got emotional, and the tenth graders took advantage of this to eat all the dessert.
The evening was just fantastic, thanks to the yeoman's work of coworker Robert, the junior class advisor, who has been fundraising and organizing for months. I think the only bad part of prom for all of us was that this means Robert won't be forced to cook giant pots of chili to sell at lunch anymore. Unless he needs spare cash. I'm not above a little burglary to try to make this happen.
The theme of the FIS prom was "Celestial," hence the moon and stars overhead here:
The tables were decorated with star ornaments and cookie cutters. There were cards scattered with pictures of Venus, the Solar System, etc. Justin and I invented a game like War in which you played these cards and won based on whose card had the greatest probability of life - as in, Mars defeats Mercury. If you had a tie (say, Space and Earth, or the Astronaut and E.T.,both at 100) you kept playing until somebody won. If you play Saturn or Jupiter, you get to count the moons. I still think Justin shortchanged Venus. He is so carbon-normative. Give sulfur-based life forms a chance!Edited to add: Coworker Katherine took this picture of our card game, just in case you thought we couldn't possibly REALLY be nerdy enough to play it. If there is one thing you can learn from this blog, it is never to bet against how nerdy Justin and I can be.
We also had glowsticks. I made a bracelet, then a hat, then a belt, then a belt with a dangly bit, and then a bandolier. Think of me as a four-year-old with marginally better motor skills.
Coworkers Sarah and Tim helped with photography, and these are their pictures above. Their camera suffered a tragic hairline fracture on their trip to Vietnam when the lens got sideswiped by a motorcycle (which, on the other hand, is probably one of the better cocktail party stories about camera problems. Much better than ours, anyway, which involved the zoom lens breaking because Justin kept accidentally turning the camera on while it was in his pocket.) This is me demonstrating genuine, commiseratory sorrow at their loss. Also being the Monopoly Man.
Like two of the U.S. proms I went to, there was a dinner first. Unlike the proms I went to, there was very little dancing and it was over at 10. Think of it more as a senior banquet with a bit of dancing at the end. We had slide shows of senior photos, a great video of friends and former teachers around the world, and musical performances by some juniors. We all got emotional, and the tenth graders took advantage of this to eat all the dessert.The evening was just fantastic, thanks to the yeoman's work of coworker Robert, the junior class advisor, who has been fundraising and organizing for months. I think the only bad part of prom for all of us was that this means Robert won't be forced to cook giant pots of chili to sell at lunch anymore. Unless he needs spare cash. I'm not above a little burglary to try to make this happen.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Philippines: Jollibee! and Other Fast Food
Filipino food is really good. I say this even though Nana and I spent a shameful amount of time in the Philippines eating fast food. That's because the Philippines boasts some really tasty fast-food options--and even a few welcome wrinkles at McDonalds!
Jollibee
Jollibee is the undisputed champion of Filipino fast food chains. Not only does Jollibee outnumber McDonalds in the Philippines, but Jollibee also owns Chow King, the second most ubiquitous Filipino fast food joint, and a 70% stake in Mang Inasal (see below). As a result, I'd guess that roughly half of our meals in the Philippines came from Jollibee in one way or another.
We hit Jollibee up at two different times of day. First, a Filipino breakfast, fast-food style: garlic rice, scrambled eggs, corned beef hash, and a pandesal (a local roll) with sausage.
We also stopped by Jollibee for a late dinner, where in addition to the standard Yum Burger, we sampled Jollibee spaghetti and some fried chicken.
The spaghetti was . . . odd. Not unpleasant, but the sauce was sweet, with a very faint hint of chili. It's almost like they accidentally dropped a packet of spring roll sauce in the mix.
McDonald's, by the way, makes its own variation on the pandesal--a "hamdesal" with ham, egg, and (yes) honey mayo.
Mang Inasal
Mang Inasal ("Mr. Barbecue," if anyone bothered to translate) is best known in the Philippines for offering unlimited rice with every meal.
But it's best known in our little family for selling tasty, super-cheap barbecue.
Further evidence that, if I lived in the Philippines, I might weigh 400 pounds.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
More Philippines Phun: Sun Cruises Corregidor Tour
In just a few days and with our resolution not to bust ourselves touring too hard, Justin and I barely scratched the surface of the Philippines's 7,107 islands. We did get to see the historic island of Corregidor, which played an important role in World War II, via Sun Cruises, and in company with our awesome friends Beia and Romel.
Also, lunch.
Before World War II, Corregidor was a US base. I found a wonderful web site by a woman born on Corregidor to service parents with details of their life there, such as the closet with the light on all the time to prevent mold from growing in the clothes. (Lest you be puzzled by the visible dryness in our pictures, I'll point out that May, our visit, is the hottest and driest month on Corregidor. We have impeccable timing.) Apparently you couldn't bring furniture from the U.S. because the glue couldn't hold up to the heat. causing the furniture to fall apart. I finally understand know why the tied rattan furniture is such a hallmark of colonial design. Despite such irritations, her family loved Corregidor enough to re-up for an extra year there. Well, it can certainly be stunning:
And also, you had lots of servants for very little money- she says three for her family of three (a houseboy, laundress, and nursemaid).The barracks were constructed out of concrete, apparently because the termites got anything else, and even for concrete they had to raise it off the ground. The remains of pre-war barracks can be seen on Corregidor today. The island is shaped like a tadpole, they like to tell you, which is certainly more polite than the word I thought of. In the "head" of the island, you have the areas of Bottomside, Middleside, and Topside, so named because the island is a big old hill. Bottomside, the lowest altitude is where we took the picture earlier, and also where we had our lunch. Housing starts on Middleside with the remains of Middleside Barracks.
Things get wild on Topside, where you have the ruins of Mile-Long Barracks, supposedly the longest single barracks building made by the U.S. It's not actually a mile long (closer to 1/3 of a mile) but "One Third Of A Mile-Long Barracks" sounds lame.
The missing windows here were once wood and capiz shell, a la the highly-rated toilets of Sonya's. The ruins of the movie theater are there as well. We also went up the reconstruction of the Spanish Lighthouse, for some stunning views.
You are probably picking up on some key words for visitors to the Philippines: "remains," "ruins," and "reconstructions." Just as it did with Manila, World War II did a number on Corregidor.
Indulge the history teacher for a moment here. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese navy bombed Pearl Harbor (you've probably heard of this; it's pretty infamous). War came to the Philippines on December 8, but when you factor in the international date line, it was the same day as Hawaii, just ten hours later. General Douglas MacArthur, it is recorded, received notification of the Hawaii attack within an hour and a half. This left him nine hours of preparation in which he did... precisely nothing.
You may have already picked up on Justin and my distaste for Dugout Doug. Every history geek worth his or her salt has pet villains, and he's one of ours. Partly, this is shaped by my grandfather, who never forgave him for his actions on Corregidor (more on this later). It's also shaped by my dislike of men who attempt to overthrow the U.S. government by suborning the military. Philippine opinions on MacArthur seem more widespread. On the other hand, there was the Carlos Celdran tour, in which he shared the "Dugout Doug" nickname (earned, so it's said, from his habit of fleeing for cover when bombs started falling, leaving his men behind) and blamed MacArthur's egofor the destruction of Manila (again, more later, unless I forget). On the other hand, according to our Corregidor guide, MacArthur's name was called for years at roll call for the Philippine Army, with a sergeant stepping forward to give the response, "Present in spirit."
So MacArthur failed to get the Philippine defense off the ground, literally, culminating in his air force being destroyed on the tarmac. The American-Filipino combined army fought at length on the Bataan Peninsula but gradually retreated south until forced to surrender due to lack of supplies. The march back up the peninsula is more commonly known as the Bataan Death March, in which thousands of prisoners (the majority Filipino) died of malnutrition, exhaustion, dehydration, or execution. The purpose of the Death March was to clear Bataan for the invasion of the intransigent little island of Corregidor.
Make a backwards "C" with your right hand, and your index finger is Bataan. The fleshy part between your finger and thumb is Manila. The space in the C is Manila Bay, and Corregidor is an imaginary dot between your thumb and index finger, guarding the entrance to the bay.
MacArthur and his staff had withdrawn to Corregidor, along with the men who would be inaugurated as President and Vice-President of the Philippines. They hunkered down in Malinta Tunnel, now home to a "light and audio" show for an additionall fee which we gave a pass.
MacArthur evacuated from Corregidor to Australia in February, 1942, both giving his famous "I Shall Return" speech and leaving his second in command, General Wainwright, to surrender to the Japanese in May. My grandfather never forgave him for this. (It should be said that MacArthur was under orders from Roosevelt to evacuate. It should also be said that my grandfather probably didn't think much of Roosevelt either.) This ardent desire to fulfill his pledge, coupled with frustration at being an Army general in the Navy's theater of war, led MacArthur to insist on opening a front in the Philippines even though the island-hopping strategy (bypass non-essential islands en route to Japan itself) dictated leaving them alone. In the Battle of Manila alone, nearly 100,000 Filipino civilians died, and the city was left in ruins. You connect the dots.Here's a statue of him at the dock.
The potential for misinterpetation in this hand gesture amuses me.I have just know realized that this is substantially longer than the "moment" I asked for. Thank you for bearing with me, and please understand I can't help myself.
We visited some of the defense sites of the island, such as Battery Hearn
and Battery Way, named, to my surprise, for a guy named Way, instead of as in "Battery Path." It is the site of the stand of an army mortar crew let by Major William Massello. Our surnames are similar enough that I adopted him for the duration of reading his memorial plaque. Distinguished Service Cross for keeping the battery operating for eleven straight hours while under continuous fire, firing the gun himself to minimize the exposure of his crews to counterfire, saved his own right arm by holding down his artery with his left thumb after shrapnel tore through it, reportedly tearing the telephone out of the wall so he couldn't receive an order to surrender. Oh, and then it was off to three years as a POW, where he insisted on offloading sick comrades from prison ships while his right arm was still paralyzed. No wonder Death waited until this guy was 89 to come after him.
The monument to World War II on Corregidor is at the top of Topside, along with a little shoestring-budget museum of Corregidor's history as a US base.
I have three main complaints on the day with Sun Cruises. The first was that we took way too long to get started after lunch, which plays into the second - not enough time at each stop. I really had to dash through this museum. The third complaint, which I know is going to make me sound like a bit of a jerk, was that the guide's accent was so thick that I barely had any idea what he was saying.On the way home we were treated to the famed Manila Bay sunset.
I forgot to mention that these ferry rides are over an hour long. That's probably why Justin looks so happy. I have to get him off of boats with a crowbar.According to the tourism video showed by China Airlines at the end of our flight, there is a Filipino saying that while watching the sun set off of the first Philippine island, the gods liked the sight so much they created 7,106 additional islands. So I will leave you with this photograph of sunset over Bataan, and point out that if I were in charge, I'm not sure I'd stop at 7,107.
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