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Transvestites and Tekken: The Ferret Does Four Rooms in Japan

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Prologue (and how we ended up here for twice as long as planned) The story of my travels around Japan are perhaps best accompanied by the story about how I got here, or more precisely, how I fucked up. Travel plans set, it was to be a voyage spanning both a reuniting with my father in Singapore followed by a jaunt in Tokyo; planned, primed and packed, it was only at the airport that disaster struck. Caught completely unaware, I had only 5 months left on my passport, one month less than what was required to enter the country. Panic set in, there was no chance of catching the flight. Plans dashed, hope sprang forth as we frantically devised a plan to rectify the situation. A lucky chance appointment to have a passport made within a day (with all the required paperwork completed in the span of a few hours) thwarted by the decision that due to a 2mm lift on the laminated page, the passport was declared damaged and thus ineligible for use or renewal (bullshit, I've been to more th
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Bungees, Buns, B53's and a Belgian Woman: The Ferret Does Hong Kong and Macao

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Continuing the tale of my epic journey across the land of China, a brief five hour flight - almost directly South - and we soon found ourselves in the blistering heat of Hong Kong; a land that was once a British colony before being handed back to the Chinese in '97, filled with expats and people that actually speak English . You can read about the first part of my escapade here . Day one and we arrive in Mongkok, the most densely populated place on the planet. But I mean, how bad can it be? Oh it's pretty bad. I spent my time here sharing a 8x12 foot room with Alex on the 8th floor of a 16 floor building on a road that you can't physically see for all the god damn people on it, waking up each morning to the sound of Alex standing butt naked in front of me doing his hair and yelling "don't look! don't look!" The shops cover multiple floors with signs hanging everywhere. We're only 4 floors up from a Cat Café (the Café Idea) for example. Guess wher
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Photo's With the White Man: The Ferret Does Beijing

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I should probably open with explaining that during the time of planning this trip - an idea I've been knocking around since the NYC trip when I really began to travel the world - it was thought that Alex was to be moving abroad. He still might be, in fact, and so as a send off we both decided to try and make this the most epic adventure of our lives. Epic mission accomplished. We were blessed by a Buddhist Monk and explored the vastness of the Great Wall just a day after Tom Cruise went to the same spot (crisis averted! We avoided that short-assed scientologist prick)! I taught Alex about self-reliance and survivability by abandoning him in a country where nobody spoke a single god-damn word of English, learned how to dance the Chinese National Dance, were repeatedly stopped for photos - an idea that quickly turned into "only if we can get one of you in return," often to much giggly enthusiasm - and jumped from a 233m building living to tell the tale. Welcome to the obs
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Do Koreans Dream of Electric Sleep?: The Ferret Does South Korea

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"Gun... Line... Box... Batman T Batman. Ooh! The place where I eat!" - A Westerners guide on how to look for a gimbap in South Korea (gimbap is a sort of sandwich made using some form of filling wrapped in rice and seaweed). I fear I might be one trip ahead of myself in terms of titles. Prague was named Gangnam Style, then I travel a stones throw from Gangnam. Now I'm making Blade Runner references, yet I'm told my next trip might make it an even more apt title. Let me, however, clear up a few things right now, as this was the most common only question I was asked by friends who knew of my visit. No, I did not go to Gangnam. It's a posh upper class area that I suspect is rather uninteresting, out of the way from central Seoul, and not worth my limited time in the capital. Nor did I meet PSY. The population of South Korea is only a little short of the population of the UK, and that's assuming he was even in the country. Dude's kinda international th
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Oppa Gangnam Style: The Ferret does Prague

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Apparently it's become something of a meme in S. Korea, and I asked Alex to get a video of me drunkenly doing the dance to complement this piece but... Well if I'm drunk, explaining anything to him is borderline impossible. Yet, nevertheless, gangnam style suggests to me 'I'm gonna look like a twat yet do it anyway because it could be fun,' which sums up a lot of this trip. And the whole 'heeeeeey sexy lady' part, well that fits too (hot damn). Apparently there's also a major subtext westerners missed out on about the materialism of the modern world. Well, that has absolutely nothing to do with this trip. In fact, if anything, Alex was at his least materialistic which is certainly something I should commend, even if it resulted in more photo's of me in the bathroom and hours of drunken woman chasing, but moving on: Alex owns a copy of 'Twilight' on blu-ray. I don't know why, but he does. And so it begins, the drive to the airport
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