East of West

That's the arch and colonnade for the Manhattan Bridge, near my hotel in Chinatown. I've been shifting between different hotels in New York and New Jersey for about a week, to get the best prices. I think they're a bit inflated right now because of the UN meeting, or maybe prices are showing lower next week just because they're lower when you reserve earlier. Anyway, it's my first time on the east coast of the US. I'm mainly here for the New York Film Festival and to visit colleges because I want to go to grad school but I also I just want to be able to say I've been here at least once in my life. For most of my life, if someone had asked me if I wanted to go to New York City, I would've said, "Not especially," despite the innumerable movies I love that were set and/or shot in the city. I'd always admired what I knew about the city's spirit and diversity but I didn't see any reason why I should go to the inconvenience of visiting it. But living in Japan made me realise what a potent symbol the city remains for people around the world, even if they can't articulate why.

I've spent two nights in Brooklyn, four in New Jersey, and one in Manhattan. One thing I've noticed is that people are a lot more polite here than they are in San Diego, at least right now. It feels a little like the San Diego I remember from six years ago. I've gotten no rude comments and the few people who have commented on the odd way I dress have done so in what seems like a more natural, less rehearsed, less condescending fashion.

Mostly I've been in New Jersey, in Ridgefield, the Korea Town, which was fine because I could get cheap, filling meals from the local H Mart as well as bottled green tea, which I seem to have a taste for lately. I rarely drank it in Japan. I assume I should have easy access to such things here in Chinatown, too.

Mostly New Jersey seemed a lot more generically American than New York. The layout of the Target was so precisely identical to the one in Santee it was eerie. One thing I found startling was the amount of roadkill. I saw a dead groundhog, a dead canary, and a dead deer on the same short length of road. It took two days for the deer to be removed. I almost became roadkill myself when Google maps directed me to walk on the side of a busy bridge with no sidewalk. The next day, because I wanted to get from my hotel to the Target, I tried to find an alternate route around that bridge which took me onto an overgrown, abandoned subway track, where I saw this live deer:

I took a couple steps after taking the photo and the animal ran away. I followed the track, which runs under the bridge I was trying to circumvent, trying to find a way I could get out of it on the south side, where the Target was. Eventually I came to this pitch black tunnel carved into the rock.

The deer must have run in there so I assume it comes out the other side but it seemed unwise to risk it without a flashlight. It was wonderfully spooky anyway.

I ended up having to go back the way I came and managed to find a somewhat awkward way to the south side of the old track on the western side of the bridge.