Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself

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Another day without a plan. The Saturday of a long weekend - does it mean that places will be more or less crowded than a normal weekend? Which places are crowded on weekends anyway, compared to weekdays? And how much do crowds matter? We're used to Ho Chi Minh City now - our first times here we were straight from Christchurch, and the crowds seemed intimidating. Over breakfast I wondered about the possibility of seeing a movie. We had seen a cinema sign on the Kaihin-Makuhari shopping complex (I've mentioned this place before, but I referred to it as as "the station one before" ours, because the name is a bit of a mouthful. I thought we could spend some time looking at the shops on the opposite side of the station from the outlet mall we were at a few days ago, because none of that part was open last time.

So with no better ideas, we set out at about 9.30 for K-M Station. "Despicable Me 3" was the only movie that suited our mood for that time of day, and it was starting at 10.20. Time for a coffee before it started, but first we should check out the cinema. No queues, no waiting, so we asked the ticket seller for the tickets. She was happy to oblige, but luckily, she thought to check whether Japanese was okay. Ah. No. Not really. It simply hadn't occurred to me that language would be an issue. In Vietnam it has now become something to note when thinking of going to a movie. When we first arrived, all foreign movies were subtitled (even kids' cartoons - how can little kids read subtitles?) but in recent years their dubbing has become a lot better and more commonplace, so now we have to remember to check whether a movie is dubbed or subtitled before choosing which showing to go to. But here I just forgot. The girl said that "Pirates of the Caribbean 4," later in the afternoon, would be subtitled though, so we thanked her and said we'd come back later.

It was good to get good service like that. Of course most service staff here are good: well-trained,professional, generally friendly, although some prefer to remain business-like, but on our first night we had an episode that showed that unthinking and inflexible staff can be found anywhere, even here. Our bill for dinner came to something like 2013 yen (say), but we only had big notes ($100 equivalent) and some coins. I counted out what I thought was 13 yen but I mistook a coin, and I must have given her a 5 instead of a 10. I had the rest of the coins in the palm of my hand, and I said to the cashier, "That's right, isn't it?" and she said yes and took those coins I had put down. She then proceeded to give back, not a nice round 8000 yen, but 7000 yen in notes, and 995 yen (around US$10) in change, because that's what her till told her to do. Grrr.

Anyway, back to the cinema. That was Plan A out the window. Back outside to head for a coffee. Oh look, a bus. A cheap shuttle bus, going to a shopping mall. Okay, why not. I'd read about this mall: it's big and famous and popular. And we've nothing better to do, let's explore the area a bit more. So we hopped on, and went to the Aeon Mall. This name is all over the place here, but not just in Japan. I don't know if they're giving Westfield a run for their money in NZ and Australia yet, but there's at least two Aeon Malls in Ho Chi Minh City, and they're very popular, with their Japanese aesthetic. We went to one a few months after it opened, and it was very cool, with a Japanese department store, lots of Japanese restaurants, and two 200-yen (or 38,000-dong) shops. And lots of other upmarket shops too. But when we went back maybe a year after that, it had lost a lot of the Japanese influence. The Japanese restaurant food was now laced with chilli and no longer authentic, the service standards had slipped, quite a few shops had closed and not been replaced. Such a shame. Still, this mall was genuinely Japanese, but in saying that, it was still a mall. Even though many of the shop names were unfamiliar, they still had the feel of local big brand names. We did find one shop to spend a lot of money at (on me!) - the kind of place you might call a hippy shop (well I do,anyway): you know, tie-dyes and earrings, incense and batik. They had a lot of clothes that were big and sloppy and one-size-fits-all, and although that is an infuriating misnomer in some shops, luckily it was not in this one. I bought several items, and Stephen also bought some earrings for himself. I only stopped there to buy some flip-flops, because I had worn new shoes, thinking we wouldn't be walking much. But the backs were rubbing, and a pair of jandals would be more comfortable. If you're wondering about the irony of me buying big sloppy dresses after I wrote in surprise about the Japanese women wearing such clothes, well, imagine how the clothes must look on them if I can wear the same size!

Wandering the mall took us from its opening time up to lunch time. Oh, on the way we hatched Plan C: this mall also had a cinema, so maybe they would have a subtitled movie showing sometime this morning. No, not one. Okay, Plan D, have lunch and go home for a sleep maybe,then go back to the first cinema for the afternoon showing. Lunch we chose to have at a Chinese restaurant, again because it had dishes with the most green veges. But then we forgot and ordered spring rolls instead of a salad. Oops. As we finished, I googled the cinema to see what I could find out, and they had a movie that could be in English starting in two minutes. Right, there's Plan E. We headed back down to the far end of the mall (of course) to see if it was indeed subtitled, and indeed, no it wasn't. They had no showings at all of any movie that wasn't dubbed. So there. Plan F. Now that we're back at this end of the mall, what is this thing nearby, the Pet Mall? A separate but connected building for all your pet needs, including toys, food, clothes, cupcakes, ice cream, training school, clinic, and pets. Yes, clothes, and the cupcakes and ice cream were made of vegetables and meat. Oh, and for goodness sake, a $580 pet pram. Like a stroller but flat-bottomed rather than sitting-shaped, and with a full covering so, yes, a pram. I warned Stephen as we went in that I may have been about to buy the cats a present, and I did. They both wear collars already, so I bought a couple more for them.

After criss-crossing the mall a couple more times, because the return bus-stop was not signposted until you got right to the exit door nearest the bus-stop, we got back to K-M station. It was still early afternoon, though, so I suggested to Stephen that we go to another local attraction I had seen online. This was one station past ours in the other direction, and was a historic house next to a local shrine. He was amenable, so we did that. We took a taxi from the station, but the driver needed to get advice on where to go, and he still had to key in the address to take us there. It wasn't far, still within the flagfall, but we were glad not to have walked. The driver said we needed to go up the slope that he dropped us at the bottom of, and that was fine. We found the shrine - brand new, bright and shiny, mostly, although there were one or two old (several hundred years) minor buildings there. But I've never seen shrine gates so newly made before. The smell of the wood was divine (literally?) but more than that, the feel of the wood was unbelievable - it was so close-grained and smooth, almost silken to the touch. And the gates were made without nails - brand new gates but traditional methods. (But two of the posts had split, almost their entire height, and almost a centimetre wide. Is that ok? Will the gate last for 500 years like that?) Anyway, the shrine was peripheral; we were still looking for the house, so we went down because clearly it wasn't at the top of the slope. We started walking around the hill, because a photo had shown the house on a slope, and soon we found a sign that showed it to be on the opposite side of the hill. Dilemma: walk uphill and down, or around the hill, which was shorter? Uphill, surprisingly, won the day, because it hadn't been a hard walk up, and so we were down the other side very quickly. Still no sign of the house, despite using Google Maps every 50m or so.Then we saw a tiny lane that had to be the one. Yes, it was.

This house has a connection to the Last Emperor of China (we saw that movie the first time we were in Japan together), but there was no information in English at all in the house, and I think now it probably has to do with that emperor's brother's wife's family. She was born of noble lineage in 1914. It was interesting to see what a good family house would look like - I've seen farmhouses and palaces and modern-but-traditional, but I haven't seen genuine/normal/old like this before. It was L-shaped, with a corridor of tatami mats around the inside of the L, and a western-style room (wooden floor and panelled walls, and I think a door to then outside) at the top of the L. It also had a pretty garden, with those classically Japanese, carefully designed pine trees, and it would have had a pond and a stream, but they were dry.

After about 20 minutes there, we decided to get a taxi straight back home, because it couldn't be far, just too far to walk. We crossed the road, which was a big road, highway-like, and started walking. But there were very few taxis, and we weren't sure if you're allowed to hail a passing taxi anyway. So we kept walking and soon were halfway home, and there was a supermarket, so we stopped for a drink and to get something for dinner, and we continued on home, still walking, still no taxis, but it was too close now anyway, and then we were home. And this was another good day for a bath. Lovely. After dinner, we finally watched a movie (on Netflix, on the laptop) and then it was time to write this. And now it's time for bed.

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Photos

Shinsen Shrine, Inage
New wooden gate

Yukari House, Inage
Looking out to the garden

Yukari House, Inage
Looking through two tatami-mat rooms out to the garden