Blue Bottle Japan!

Somewhere between Takadanobaba and Ueno Stations

(Dad pondering the subway map)

Tokyo is home to the most extensive rapid transit system in the world and it is INCREDIBLE. Every train is EXACTLY on time and the stations and trains are immaculately clean. Though Sri Lankan buses didn't share the immaculateness and packed in three or four times the capacity into the bus they were also always on time. So according to me, both Sri Lanka and Japan's public transportation systems have the San Francisco MUNI beat by a long shot. Get it together SF.

Tommy Box in Japan...and me toooo!

I'm with my Dad!! I left Sri Lanka last week and have been in Tokyo for a few days meeting with young organizers from the Japan Eco-League and the Japan Campus Climate Challenge (will tell you more later).

But last night Mister Tom Box showed up and now we are headed out to adventure around Japan! It felt so strange, after months of traveling alone, to be standing on the street corner looking onto the busy streets of Tokyo waiting for my Dad to pop up out of the subway. It was really fun to see him when he did pop up, but it was also strange. It was like this: Hello person who made me. Weird. Ah, my Dad is here. Cute. I love him. I look so much like him...shoot is that a good thing to look like a 65 year old man?! SO glad he made it safe. Dad's here. Wow me and my Dad are in Tokyo -- YAY!!

I will keep you posted on our travels and also be posting more from Sri Lanka. I was so sad to leave Sri Lanka last week. The past two months have most definitely been two of the best months of my life and I feel so grateful to all the incredible friends that took such good care of me there and shared their country with me. I am forever changed for the better! I cannot wait to go back and cannot wait to see the amazing things that the Sri Lanka Youth Climate Action Network does over the next few years.

Sleeping with Elephants/Elephants killed your parents?!

Meet Dinu. I met Dinu when him and his friends took me and some other tourists on a crazy jungle ride to chase elephants. I was a little nervous because I'm not so much of a wild life person and I was with all wild boys who were ready to push the limits!! But the second I met Dinu I felt safe, there was something very calming about him. We were standing in a tree house looking out for elephants and I asked him how he got into elephants. He looked at me and said, "My parents were killed by elephants." I could tell he was serious. He went onto explain that he grew up on a jungle road and one evening when his parents were walking to temple elephants killed them by picking them up with their trunks and throwing them into a ravine.

Flash forward two hours. I was standing in the middle of the jungle, my heart beating so fast as we watched a group of elephants move toward us. I looked at Dinu for reassurance. He looked at me and said quietly, "Don't worry, we are safe. We are being careful and they can sense we are respecting them. Stay here next to me and just don't surprise them. They won't hurt anyone." I flashed him a look like, are you CRAZY?!?! BOTH of your parents were killed by elephants!!!!!

He continued, "I know, I know, Let's just watch them naturally, be calm Heathie" (what a lot of Sri Lankans call me).

The elephants snuggled each other and made a low but very loud purring sounds, it was INTENSE to be that close. On the way home in the jeep I was trying to express myself about the experience, rather inarticulately - "They are SO big and weird, you could really see that they loved each other."

Dinu said, "I know, I know what you mean. I just want to sleep as close to them as possible. Some nights I drive my jeep into the jungle and go to sleep in the back. Packs of elephants just crowd outside the jeep pressing against it and knocking it- purring and squealing all night. I sleep good there."

You just gotta go with your crew

(more pics to come)

I think one of the best things about this trip for me has been the it has really forced me to expand my definition of who "my crew" is. A couple of days ago it became very clear to me how much my definition has changed in the past few weeks.

I am currently on a farm in Sri Lanka learning to build a house out of mud (it is called earthen building). I am part of a workshop that consists of twenty Sri Lankan men (17 to 60 years old), one Thai guy, two teachers (husband and wife - Jo from Thailand and Peggy from Colorado) and their 5 year old kid, Tan.

On the second day, after a hard day of building, me and some of the others went for a bath in the river. I stood on the river bank and watched the boys and men strip down to their tighty whities (actually mostly tighty bluies and tighty blackies) and dive in. I dove in only to eject three feet out of the water - "SOMETHING BIT MY FOOT!!" It didn't hurt, actually it felt kinda good, whatever it was, but it scared me SO bad!! One of the men swam over and let me know that it was just a fish and it was just eating at the wounds on my feet (of which there we MANY from mixing the mud with my bare feet). He told me it would help my wounds heal faster. I nodded but decided to just float on my back to avoid the situation - good or not.

As I laid there and looked down the river at the men unwrapping their bars of soap and lathering themselves and their laundry up I felt the strangest feeling...peacefulness. Heather Box in the middle of no where Sri Lanka, at dusk, swimming with eight stranger men, most of whom I couldn't communicate with, in a muddy river with biting fish. That is about half of my fears mixed into one setting. I mean, if I imagine myself coming across a group men alone in the middle of no where as it was getting dark I know my heart would pound and I would just think the worst thoughts and go in the opposite direction. (I have an irrational fear of groups of men I don't know - as many women do). But tonight as I looked upon a game of soap monster (man covered totally in soap minus his eyes, chasing one of the other guys) I realized that these guys, for this week, were my crew and I felt so safe and at ease.

I can only hope that I carry some of this home with me. Maybe, when I get home, if I just imagine the groups of guys on the streets of San Francisco and New York in their underwear playing soap monster I will feel more comfortable and at peace when walking down the streets alone.

Two decades later, I finally understand the Japanese tourists in San Francisco

I distinctly remember one summer day in 1989; I was gazing out the back seat window of mom's volvo station wagon on our way home from a day in San Francisco. I was caught in a thought as I watched the world pass us by: What the hell were all the Japanese tourists going to do with the photos they had taken of me that day? I was a tall, really skinny kid with bright white hair. When ever I came to San Francisco and came across a Japanese tour bus hordes of tourists, linked arm in arm, would point, wave shyly and giggle at me then they'd motion to my parents asking if they could snap a picture of me. Sometimes they would get in the photo with me. I didn't mind too much but never understood what they were going to do with the picture. Would they put it in their album, in a frame, were they making fun of me? As soon as I stepped off the plane in Sri Lanka I came full circle and understood them completely. I mean, the little kids are just so freaking cute, I can't help but ask their parents if I can take a photo. The only difference is if their parents are young or the kids are like twelve or above, I say to them with a accent after I take the photo: "Facebook?" If they nod I give them my pen and they write down their email and I post and tag them on Facebook. Sometimes I even friend them on Facebook. Maybe 20 years from now they will still be in touch with the weird tourist lady who was laughing and waving at them...wouldn't that be crazy?