Out of the ordinary
I
’m terrible at adventures. I like verb
tables; I’ve never tried ayahuasca
and, despite the hints of my
Peruvian landlady, I never did
spontaneously marry someone from
Cusco. I sort of bring ordinariness with
me wherever I go. That seems inimical to
having much fun when travelling, but I’ve
learnt adventures grow from more basic
circumstances than I’m prone to imagine.
Much more necessary than a fearless
spirit or zip wires is an apple. Last year
I was halfway up Machu Picchu trying
to research Inca attitudes towards stone.
My guide was telling me about the ruins
and I was really trying to listen because
I was there to work, not on holiday,
but I was wheezing in the altitude
(pathetic: it’s only 2400 metres; everyoneelse was fine) and my concentration was
shot. Then a herd of llamas danced past.
I wheezed along in pursuit but lost them- they’re pretty nippy, and springy, and
not oxygen-deprived.
Then there was a yell behind me and
when I turned I got a faceful of happy
llama looking for my apple.
Apples: important.
It’s important as well not to leave
your passport in the loos at Beijing
airport, but even if that happens, things
might still turn out well. I realised what
I’d done only after getting on the train
that takes you across the airport. I didn’t
speak any Mandarin and the staff didn’t
understand my accent (I’m British) and
I ended up stranded in the arrival hall
wondering how the hell to contact the
embassy. But then along came the man
I’d sat beside on the plane — he was
a Beijing local who’d been teaching in
Yorkshire the previous year — and he
collared me cheerfully and did what
no English person in their right mind
would ever do: he took me to lost
property. In London that would earn
you nothing more than a scornful look.
I did get a scornful look from the lady
behind the Beijing desk, but she also
had my passport. The cleaners had
handed it in about five minutes after
I’d lost it. It had beaten me across the
airport.
While I’m on the joy of ordinary
things, I need to say that one of the
best aspects of living in Japan has
nothing to do with temples or samurai
history; it’s pubs.
Bureikou means putting aside rank.
It’s an old idea, and these days it
involves a bunch of people who work
together going to the pub and getting
drunk, with one rule: whatever is said
in the pub, stays there. It’s especially
important in Tokyo, where working life
is dominated by big corporations and
their punishing standards of behaviour.
A session at the pub is a chance to
loosen up, and it works. People of
usually flinty austerity confess to affairs,
mad things done abroad, secret PhDs,
but even when nothing spectacular gets
aired it’s still very funny.
My favourite pub story was from
a man who worked for the army. The
English word “attack” has been absorbed
into Japanese as attack o suru, but rather
than meaning an assault, it’s slang for
trying to pull a girl. This means it’s
rather a false friend; Japanese men
often assume “attack” in standard
English means to pull or to score.
Which causes confusion and alarm
if you’re a Japanese soldier speaking
English to foreigners, and you mention
you’re about to attack a woman.
I get nervous travelling, but I have
a mantra now: check lost property, go to
the pub, and always bring an apple. ●
Natasha Pulley’s second novel, The Bedlam
Stacks, follows the trials of a 19th-century
expedition to find quinine in the Peruvian
Amazon (Bloomsbury, $29.99).UNPACKINGHungry llamas, lost passports and drunken confessions
in Japanese pubs – sometimes adventure comes
looking for you, writes NATASHA PULLEY.
Travel memoirs168 GOURMET TRAVELLER
ILLUSTRATION LIZ ROWLAND