3-Way

Cincinnati is known for many things. The Reds and the Bengals. Talk show host and former mayor  Jerry Springer. The WEBN fireworks.  Some television show that I never saw and was never actually filmed here. But the most Cincinnati-ish thing I know of is the chili. I was raised on it. Cincinnati chili is like no other chili. It’s got a sweetness that comes from adding cinnamon and cocoa powder. There are no peppers or beans (unless you add them). It’s very rarely eaten from a bowl, but instead is used more like a sauce.  (And it is definitely not eaten over rice!*)

There are two main methods of eating Cincinnati Chili.  The less regionally specific is the Cheese Coney, or chili cheese dog.  Simply a hot dog in a bun with mustard, Cincinnati Chili spooned overtop, capped with copious amounts of thinly shredded cheddar cheese, diced onions if desired.  My step-father likes his without mustard, I like mine without onions, but you must have the chili and the cheese to consider it a Coney. My method of choice is the 3-Way, chili spooned over spaghetti with finely shredded cheddar cheese, adorned with oyster crackers.  Add diced onions and you have a 4-Way; onions plus kidney beans makes it a 5-way.

There are other variations, often seasonal or restaurant specific.  Chili cheese fries, chili burgers, even chili mac and cheese.  There are Firehouse versions, chili with extra season and spice.  And of course, each restaurant does it a little differently.  My personal favorite is Skyline Chili, which is a bit thinner and sweeter.  Gold Star Chili is thicker and spicier.  These are the two chains you’ll find all over the Greater Cincinnati area.  You can also buy it frozen, canned and in dry mixes, the latter two of which were a lifesaver when I moved to Hawaii (my mother would bring me some whenever she visited).

For newcomers to Cincinnati (or even those just visiting), trying the chili is a rite of passage.  With perverse immaturity, my friends and I would approach the uninitiated and gleefully invite them out for a three-way.  After they got over their initial confusion, we would verse them on the ways of chili and cheese. Some wouldn’t care for it, expecting something heartier, more.. chili-like.  But for those of us born and raised, there is nothing quite like Cincinnati chili.

*Hawaii has its own well-known chili — Zippys.  I first tried it at a potluck, where my friends lost no time in questioning why I was eating my chili plain.  “How else would I eat it?”  I asked.  “Over rice!” They replied, as if it was the most obvious thing ever.

This entry was featured in the Carnival of Cities October 2009.

Wordmad

Like some people collect keychains, shotglasses, flattened souvenir quarters, I have always collected words, ever since I was a little girl. The dictionary was my best friend (along with his good pal thesaurus) and I would spend many stormy nights huddled beneath the covers with a flashlight, feasting on words. No, actually, that part is a lie. I never actually had to conceal my terrible reading addiction, because I come from a pair of reading addicts who are just as hooked as I am (although I sometimes think maybe I missed out on some great childhood tradition, by never having read beneath the sheets).  Family dinners we would bond in silence, books propped between the dinner plate and the juice glass.

I learned to read when I was three, but even before then I was an author, dictating stories to my mother as she patiently wrote them down.  And I decided I wanted to be the youngest author in the world.  It was disappointing when that didn’t pan out, but I never stopped writing.  I wrote poetry, short stories, plays.  I kept stacks of journals.  I had notebooks filled with characters, plots and half written stories.

I still have bits and pieces of unfinished tales, scraps of worlds and scenes and people.  I still turn daily to my dictionary, to my thesaurus.  I still bury myself in textbooks and paperbacks.  Never stop reading.  Never stop writing.

In less than a month I will be joining thousands of people across the world in the pursuit of words.  This will be my second year participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo.  The official challenge is to write a 50k word novel in 30 days.  I made my 50k with ease last year, so I’m upping my personal word goal to 75k.  I will spend long hours in front of the computer, fingers dancing across the keys, words sailing across the screen, subsisting on copious amounts of sugar and caffeine.  I will write without stopping, I will write without correcting, I will write without thinking.  Quantity over quality; it’s all about getting it all out, on paper, in text.

People ask, what do you get if you win?  As if the sheer act of writing fifty thousand words in thirty days isn’t prize enough.  Self-pride, accomplishment, admiration from your peers; but most of all, get the words out, got to get the words out.  It’s all about the words.

NaNoWriMo is coming.  Are you ready?

For Ali, the original WordMad Girl.

Misheard Lyrics

My mother has a singular way with words.  An overeducated Appalachian, she tries to say intelligent things but just ends up butchering them.  Once she told me that my brother was a narcissus (she meant to say he was narcissistic).  If I have a headache, she’ll tell me to take an aceta-mina-minophen (I don’t know why she doesn’t just say tylenol). Having taken a Medical Billing and Coding class, she sat an oral exam, only to have the professor start laughing at her pronunciation.

My mother is a hoot.

She has a tendency toward mishearing lyrics that is simultaneously frustrating and hilarious; it has, on occasion, gotten us into trouble.  Once, while driving to the airport, my mother and brother got into an argument about the lyrics of a Metallica song (Fuel).  She insisted that the line was “Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme double geneocide!” My brother corrected her that it was “Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which you desire.”  As they bickered back and forth, I noticed that the planes overhead seemed to be getting smaller.  My concerns that we’d passed the airport were confirmed when we found ourselves in Indiana.

The song: Down in it; Nine Inch Nails
The actual lyric: I was up above it
My mother heard: I was up a butt itch

The most frustrating part is that my mother is so adamant about her version of the song.  If you correct her, she’ll just sing the wrong lyrics even louder.  Arguing is futile.

The song: Down With the Sickness; Disturbed
The actual lyric: Get up, come on get down with the sickness
My mother heard: Get up and monkey down with the sickness

My mother claims that she’s overeducated for her intelligence.  Indeed, it’s hard to take her seriously when she talks about warshing the winders or taking the whirlbarrow down to the crick.

The song: Stairway to Heaven; Led Zeppelin
The actual lyrics: And as we wind on down the road
My mother heard: And there’s a wino down the road

I love my mother.  She makes me laugh, even when she doesn’t mean to.

Rural

I am in love with the concrete jungle.  I am most at ease when surrounded by steel and glass, buildings rising up like mountains, 2am just as bright as noontime.  I am a pedestrian, happy to traverse on foot, happiest when riding the rail (when I can find one).

I find myself now trapped in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans, country road with no sidewalks, dark nights and silence.  It’s maddening.  I’m a prisoner trapped in my own home, unable to go anywhere because anywhere isn’t in walking distance, not that it’s safe to walk on the street anyway.  Country roads bring out the worst in drivers, who see the long-stretching, mostly deserted pavement as a challenge to drive as quickly and recklessly as possible.

The last time I attempted a walk I encountered a skunk.

Some people would be envious of the silence, the stars shining brightly, the remoteness, house tucked away in the trees and fields.  I did my time in childhood; I want my city back.  I miss popping out to the store to grab a forgotten ingredient for dinner.  I miss catching a bus to meet my friends for ice cream. I miss people knowing what an iPhone is.

My days are spent in my pajamas, curled up in front of the television.  The highlight of the evening is dinnertime, then dessert, then bed; then wake up and do it all over again.  For some real excitement I’ll throw on my jeans and follow my parents into town to go grocery shopping.

I could be reading, or writing, or playing music, or anything productive; but the less I do, the less I want to do.  Each wasted day drains my motivation until I’m nothing more than a lump on the couch with a carton of ice cream in my lap.

I live now in the sort of town that swallows people up.  People are born here, they grow up here, and then they die here, having never crossed the county lines.  I escaped once, fueled by knowledge that the longer I stayed, the harder it would be to leave.  Now I’m back and already I can feel the country seeping in, eating away.  I have to get out of here before it’s too late.  I have to get out while I still feel the pull of the concrete jungle.

Run

I left Hawaii the same way that I moved there; impulsively, running away from my problems, leaving a mess behind.

I’m still denying it.  I’m still trying to tell myself it hasn’t really happened.  I still hope to wake up in my box cluttered studio in Waikiki, wake up from this nightmare, the same great mistake that I just keep making, stuck in a loop.  I want to wake up in my old apartment in Cincinnati, with the past two years just a dream, because I haven’t learned anything; it’s just become more complicated, more painful.

I left my job, stable income, benefits, insurance, just up and left without notice.  I left school, halfway through summer course, a class I loved, was excelling at.  I left my apartment, newly acquired furniture, everything still in boxes, all my things, all my things left behind.  I left my friends, more friends than I’d ever had before, left family both real and adoptive.  I left everything.

I had everything and I gave it up because all I ever do is run.

On Moving

I’ve been moving all my life, and not in the metaphorical can’t stay still sense of the word, or even in the literal can’t stay still sense of the word, but in the other literal changing of domicile sense of the word.  My senior thesis was going to be focused on how I’ve moved so much throughout my life, but I moved before I got a chance to finish it.

You’d think I’d be an expert at this by now.  I think I took it for granted.  Just because I’ve moved all over and often doesn’t make it any less traumatic.  Maybe it makes it moreso traumatic, like a war victim witnessing one too many tragedies until finally they’re a bundle of nerves set off by the slightest disturbance.  I keep running but is it the running that I’m running from?

I moved last week, July the 1st.  I’m still living out of boxes but thanks to the kindness and vehicles of friends at least I have furniture now.  They say that’s okay, not unpacking right away, that everyone takes their time unpacking, but truthfully I don’t even have that many things to begin with.  Eventually I’ll have to unpack it all because otherwise I just don’t have anything.

I think part of me is hesitant to unpack, just in case.  Just in case things don’t work out at the new apartment, I’ll be all packed up and ready for the next move.  It’s like refusing to take your coat off because you only stopped in for a minute, you’ll be running right back out soon.  If you don’t get too comfortable it’s that much easier when you have to leave.

My new apartment is nice.  It reminds me of my first studio when I moved away to college, only twice as expensive, and I can’t help but think how nice of a place I could afford if I moved back to Cincinnati.  I live alone now, and much as I complained about my roommates before, I find myself now missing the presence of another person.  As little as I watched television before, now I’m missing free cable.  It’s what I’ve done all my life, always looking back at what I’m missing, always looking back at what I’ve run away from and wondering why I ever chose to run.

5th of July

I was nearly born on the 4th of July. My parents, both musicians, were on stage at an Independence Day party when my mother’s water broke; undeterred, they kept playing, and I took my time and didn’t arrive until the 5th. A lifetime of birthdays stand in my memory as beach barbecues with red, white and blue streamers. Growing up, I thought the festivities and fireworks were all for me.

2008 was my first birthday in Hawaii, and as usual, it was spent on the beach, but this was different than the manmade beaches of Ohio, semicircle of sand fringed by grass, still dark water over muddy shallows, packed with Independence Day revelers.  This was a Hawaii beach, clear blue waters over sand and stone and we were the only people for miles.  It was a pack of us, extended family and friends of the family, people I’d never met before who welcomed me with open arms, like the Hawaii I’d known when I first visited back in 2007.  The beach was lined with our tents and tarps, chairs and cots, fishing poles driven into the sand.  We stayed out there for the weekend, continuous feasting interspersed with swimming, wading, fishing, snorkeling, and at night I slept out under the sand, stars shining like they never do in the city.  And I woke up 23 and covered in sand, sand that stayed with me for days, the way the beach does.

I have a little less than nine hours left of being 23, and again I’m spending my time with my family, this time sprawled in the living room in front of fans, gulping down water and trying to stay cool.  My uncle has taken his usual place in the big recliner, remote in one hand, and occasionally he’ll laugh and point and speak to me in his heavily accented pidgin, and I’ll smile and nod and sometimes understand.  My Aunt and little cousin M are in the other room napping after a hard day of play and laughter.  We may go to a barbecue tonight; we may go see the fireworks; we may go to the beach.  The plan is uncertain.  Whatever happens, I’m happy, truly happy, to be living in Hawaii.

How I Met Rick Steves

Despite any troubles in the past, my mother and I became quite close after I went away to college (I think not living together helped, although her giving up drinking was a breakthrough for us both).   Thus it was particularly difficult for her when I moved all the way to Hawaii.  We kept in frequent touch through phone and internet, and even visited each other (her flying to Hawaii in May, me flying to Ohio in August) but such trips just weren’t practical.  If I’m lucky I can find $600 round trip from Honolulu to Cincinnati, but even $600 is a lot of money and generally involves multiple layovers so that I spend at least an entire day in transit.  When you factor in time changes and jet lag, it just doesn’t make any sense to visit for less than a week, and yet neither of us could really take that much time off work.

The West Coast provided a good alternative.  For a 5-6 hour flight at less than $300 roundtrip, it provided a good halfway point (both money and timewise) for both myself and my mother.  Last December we decided to meet for an extended weekend in Portland, Oregon as an early Christmas celebration and so that I could attend a concert.  Neither of us had been to Portland before so it was an exciting little vacation that both of us could enjoy without worrying about work or home stresses.

Although I did some planning beforehand (researching “must-sees” and public transportation), I prefer to do most of my traveling on the fly, and thus we spent most of our trip wandering aimlessly through downtown Portland.  We spent an entire afternoon in Powell’s City of Books, the largest independent bookstore in the world.  We had lunch in Portland’s Chinatown and strolled along the riverfront.  We even walked across one of the many drawbridges, much to my mother’s chagrin (she’s had a fear of drawbridges since she was a child).  We wandered the Saturday Market, saw street performers and dressed up canines (Portland is very dog-friendly), and rode the street car.  One night, for dinner, we had sushi.

My mother isn’t nearly as adventurous as I am.  (Nor is my father; I really can’t say who I got it from.)  Over the years she’s become more open to new experiences, but there’s one thing I’ve never had much luck getting her to try; raw fish.  I dragged her to a conveyor belt sushi bar, promising her that there would be something there that she’d enjoy.

For the uninitiated, conveyor belt sushi is exactly what it sounds like.  The restaurant centers on a large conveyor belt on which single serving plates of sushi (and often other food such as soups, salads, and desserts) revolve around the room. The plates are color coded by price: a yellow plate might be $1, a blue plate $2, and so on.  At the end of your meal the server simply adds up your plates for your total.  Conveyor belt sushi restaurants are perfect for sushi beginners because you don’t have to know what things are called, but simply wait and grab whatever looks appetising.  They’re also relatively cheap and, in my opinion, just plain fun.

My mother wasn’t getting into the fun.  As soon as we sat the bar she complained to me about the guy beside her at the bar; apparently he was sitting too close and crowding her space.  I ignored her and immediately offered her a plate of shrimp sushi.  My mom likes shrimp but she wasn’t too keen on the rice.  I grabbed another plate for her to try.  Apparently my coaxing and cajoling caught the attention of the man sitting next to my mother, because soon we were both persuading my mother to try this or that.

Despite my mother’s original annoyance, he turned out to be a nice guy, and even helped convince my mother to try a few things she may not have otherwise.  When he found that my mother was from Cincinnati, he revealed that he’d just been there filming a television show about traveling.  “My daughter loves to travel,” my mother gushed.  This was before I’d decided to go to Japan, so she couldn’t tell him about that.  We made a bit more small talk as we ate our food, and eventually the man paid his bill and left.

After he’d left the restaurant, the server clearing the bar looked at us in awe.  “Do you know who that was?”

We shook our heads no.

“That was Rick Steves!”

“Who?”

“Rick Steves, the travel writer!”

We were clueless.  We shrugged and finished our meal, but when I got back to the hotel I searched online.  Sure enough, Rick Steves is a well known travel writer.  Less than a month later, as I researched my first trip out of the country, I kept stumbling across articles written by him.  I couldn’t help but smile.

Tokyo Q&A

My trip to Japan was my first time traveling out of the country. I traveled four thousand miles alone to a place where I did not speak the language. People told me I was crazy.  I had the time of my life.

A big thank you goes out to everyone who submitted questions, as well as everyone who reads and comments on the blog.

Since Japan is a peculiar country, what was the most strange thing/person/place/whatever you’ve seen during your trip?

As a somewhat-lapsed-but-still-congoing Anime fan, I’m quite familiar with cosplay, the Japanese custom of creating costumes and dressing up as characters from popular television shows, comic books and video games; I’ve even wanted to make my own costume, although I never seem to get around to it. At anime conventions, I love seeing the elaborate and creative outfits other people create, and I was really disappointed to miss seeing the cosplay girls in Harajuku. That being said, it’s an entirely different thing seeing a large, middle-aged man in a Pikachu costume doing a mock strip-dance in the middle of a somewhat seedy back alley in Kanda while somewhat shocked onlookers laughed and took photos. This was a little after my friends and I had inadvertently wandered into a porn shop, so I guess I was already weirded out. As a girl who wears pink floofy hats in the middle of the summer, I’m not the one to be passing judgement, but it was definitely the strangest thing I saw.

Did you get a chance to go to any temple flea markets? Do you have any shopping tips?

The most impressive flea market I saw was outside the temple in Asakusa. I also saw a smaller market at the Jindai-ji temple in Mitaka, and some non-temple markets in Ueno. My biggest tip is to not rush through these places. Give yourself at least half a day to browse at your leisure. If you plan on making many purchases, try to bring along or buy a sturdy shopping bag to tote everything in. Finally, decide whether or not you’re going to buy the first thing you see of an item. Shopping around for a lower price can be a good thing, except that in mazes such as the Asakusa shopping center you may never find the original product again! If you really like something but want to make sure it can’t be found cheaper, take careful note of the location– “The watch store next to the ice cream shop, in the third aisle running parallel to the main temple building.” I almost missed out on buying something because I couldn’t remember where I saw it.

Also, a tip for shopping in general — keep a list of everything you buy that you plan on taking back, along with the price you paid, and receipts if applicable.  My departure procedures at customs would have been so much less stressful if I hadn’t had to do a mental inventory.

What was the scariest thing to happen on your trip?

Losing my passport was terrifying.  It happened the first night as I was checking into my hostel.  I knew I’d had it on the train in from the airport, because I’d put it into my zippered pocket for safekeeping, but somewhere between the train station and the hostel I’d misplaced it. The hostel called the train station for me, but their office had already closed for the night, so there was nothing for me to do but go to bed and hope to track it down in the morning, which seemed hopeless unless someone found it and turned it in.  As luck would have it, I ended up finding the passport in my back zippered pocket rather than the front one, which left me feeling like a fool but very much relieved.

Another tear-inducing experience was trying to use a public phone to call a friend from the airport after my flight was pushed ahead an hour.   Even with the instructions written out on the pay phone, it took a good twenty minutes to figure out which numbers to press before dialing.  This wasn’t terrifying like the passport experience had been, because in the end I just would have ended up waiting longer at the airport in Honolulu, but it was still maddeningly frustrating.

While you were in the Land of the Rising Sun, did you see or touch any monkeys?

Only at the zoo (and no touching).  Staying in Tokyo as I did, I didn’t expect to see monkeys, but I was surprised that I didn’t encounter other wildlife.  I saw more Shar-peis than I’d ever seen before, and a variety of other pet dogs, along with stray cats, but the only animals I saw that I would really consider wildlife were birds.  Tokyo is abundant with crows (which are particularly impressive when seen up close for the first time) and nice assortment of waterfowl.  Were I a bird person it would have been quite exciting; as a rat person I was mostly disappointed.   There definitely were no monkeys.

Do you think you’ll ever go back?

One of my rules when traveling is that there will always be a next time.  While I agree that you only live once, you can’t cram everything you’d want to do into a single trip.  There are a million things I would still like to do and see in Japan, and I will definitely be going back.  If all goes well, I plan on studying abroad there either next summer or the following spring.

My first Japan journey is complete, but my wanderlust is far from sated.  Next stop — the Pacific Northwest.

Reflection in Ueno

The day before I was set to fly out of Tokyo, a FedEx plane crashed at Narita International Airport, killing both pilots and closing the main runway. It’s hard to stay current with news when you’re on vacation; I didn’t find out until Monday night, and even then the information I had was fragmented and worrying. A delayed or canceled flight is stressful enough; but what about when you’re on vacation in a foreign country where you don’t even speak the language, where you can’t even call anyone because your cellphone isn’t compatible with the networks in that country? After a quick appearance online to assure everyone that I was fine and would keep them informed, I went to bed, uncertain of my plans for the following day.

The runway reopened the next morning, but the situation was still one of confusion as airlines struggled to pick up from being nearly a day behind schedule. The man at the front desk of my hotel was very considerate and called my airline for me to see what the situation would be. I was informed that since my flight was in the evening there shouldn’t be any delays; that things should be sorted out by then. I thanked him and checked out.

Burdened with backpack and dufflebag, I made my way to the Ueno train station. I’d be taking the Keisei Skyliner back to Narita airport, but not until 5pm, so I rented a locker to store my bags in. The rental procedure, like many things in Tokyo, was automated, and when I chose the English option it was a breeze to select my locker size and insert my money. I can’t remember the rates, but for all-day rental they were very reasonable.

I had the entire afternoon to explore Ueno and the weather was nearly perfect for it; although still chilly to a Hawaii girl, the rain had retired and left the sky crisp and clear. It was a perfect day for Hanami, or cherry-blossom viewing, which Ueno Park (just across the street from the train station) is noted for. I wasn’t the only one in the park at such an early hour. The sakura weren’t in full bloom yet, not the cloud of blossoms they would be in a few days’ time, but that didn’t distract from the marvel of seeing delicate pink and white flowers stretching for miles. Everyone had out their cameras, taking shots far and near, panoramics and close-ups and portraits with the blooms. It was one of those times where I didn’t feel self conscious of my camera, because everyone else was as trigger-happy as I was.

The previous night’s bath had eased my foot pain to a degree, and so I walked through the park, taking in the large pond with its array of colorfully painted rowboats, sakura trees swooping low over the water. I delighted at the discovery of colorful tents beneath which food vendors sold a tempting array of meats and vegetables on skewers or in bowls.

Across the bridge, on the opposite side from the train station, was the entrance to the zoo. I paid my 800 Yen and took a map (written only in Japanese, but the pictures were fairly self explanatory). Here I encountered gaggles of school children shepherded by adults, each group wearing a different colored hat. The zoo was the sort that children adore but adults might find saddening; the small cages kept the animals always in view but didn’t offer much in the way of living space.

On the opposite side of the zoo was another entrance, this one leading out to a collection of carnival-esque rides; in reflection I would have liked to ride the merry-go-round, but I’d been too timid to try it alone. The park continued on, with fountains, museums, temples and rows and rows of cherry blossom trees. I took photos at the Hiroshima Memorial, thousands of colorful cranes draped across a block of stone, a dove in the center guarding a flame. It was a strange sensation to be standing there, American girl at such a memorial, and I wondered if Japanese tourists ever feel awkward when they visit Pearl Harbor.

The park continued on but my painful feet and frozen body could not. I’d already taken lunch in the zoo’s cafeteria; I just wanted a place to rest. I headed back toward the train station, back toward civilization. It was at this point that I found and rested in an internet cafe. After an hour of web surfing and melon drink sipping in the warmth, I felt able to head out once again, but this time not into nature. Following the train tracks, I found myself in Ameyoko, a shopping area similar to the one I’d visited in Asakusa, rows and rows of stores crammed with anything and everything you could imagine at a bargain price. I picked up a cute panda purse for only $5 and an even cuter Le Sportsac bag, festooned with rats, and at half the price one might see in America. (Is it a knockoff? Possibly, but frankly I don’t care.)

And one point I noticed a cluster of young men, probably college age, staring at me and giggling (yes, giggling). When they saw me looking they giggled even more, and one boy gave a shy hello. I smiled and said hello back, then continued on my way. The boys continued to follow me, giggling, as far as the intersection, where we parted ways, but not before one gave a cheerful “See you!” It was an experience similar to my previous encounter with schoolchildren in the Asakusa market, and it left me grinning.