Cutting Teeth - In Queensland

There’s a lot of things that will kill you in the far northeastern corner of Australia known as tropical north Queensland. The Australians who live there never tire of telling visitors about the many hazards present in their state, famed as home to the Great Barrier Reef. It’s as though once you’ve made the 15 hour trip from California the locals inadvertently intend that you should never leave your hotel room.

Despite its perils, Queensland does have something for everyone. There’s the famed Australian Outback -- millions of acres of barely inhabited nothingness. There’s the Reef, with its thousands of islands and countless dive spots. There’s the tropical rainforest which cascades down to the very edge of the ocean. And there’s the beach, hundreds of miles of brilliant white sand, utterly unpeopled and unspoiled. Aside from snow-capped mountains, Queensland has every possible setting a tourist might want. And every one of them has something sure to kill you.

Steel fencing encloses vast stretches of beach to keep them safe from the great whites that prowl off-shore. During Queensland’s early spring and summer, a second, inner net is dragged out to keep the swimming areas clear of box jellyfish or “stingers” as the locals call them. One well meaning Queenslander told me that should I get stung I’d have 90 seconds to get back to shore, find some vinegar, and splash it on the stingers. This would neutralize their deadly toxins. Fortunately, he explained, there are bottles of vinegar left out at all public beaches. Unfortunately, if I didn’t make it in time, I’d begin to lose consciousness and death would quickly follow.

Of course, he reminded me, that while deranged and racing panic stricken from the surf, I should try not to attract the attention of any of Queensland’s thousands of enormous crocodiles that regularly drag inattentive bathers to gruesome and bloody submarine deaths. And don’t get them started about scorpions, spiders, deadly rainforest plants, or Queensland’s famed and endangered cassowary bird, which, unlike its relatives the ostrich and emu, is aggressive and can kick a grown man 20 feet through the air, splitting his chest open in the process.

I’m a reasonably adventurous traveler. I’ve bungee jumped. I’ve stepped out of a perfectly good airplane 15,000 feet above the ground. In one 12 month stretch I visited four different countries all claiming to be the world’s most destitute. I even rent an apartment in San Francisco. There’s not much that scares me. But this constant confrontation with nature’s deadly side gave me the idea that boldly probing Queensland’s many wonders might result in more adventure than I wanted.

After a few stunning dives on the Reef and with “stinger” season about to begin I decided that the dry Outback might be a bit less hazardous than the wet and wild coast.

Ha! I was told by each and every Queenslander. Had I never heard of the taipan, the brown snake, the death adder, or the tiger snake? Didn’t I know that Australia was home to 8 of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world? No, it’s 18 of the world’s 20 most deadly snakes another well intended, proud and chauvinistic Aussie informed me with the same zeal New Yorkers once used when bragging about the crime problem in their city. (Just so I shouldn’t miss the point, during my visit one of the local papers reported that fatal snake attacks had risen 600% in 1998 alone.)

Well then, maybe just a daytime bush walk in the Outback, I suggested. Fine, I was told. Just be careful of the black spear grass, an innocent looking plant with a seed that catches on one’s socks and then slowly corkscrews its way into one’s ankles where the body’s natural humidity causes it to germinate. The well meaning man who guided me through the eerie lava tubes of the Undara National Park told me that occasionally very nasty infections result, with a plant eventually erupting on the other side of one’s leg. Clearly this was something I wanted to avoid because bringing live plants back from Australia would violate USDA and Customs Department regulations.

Having survived the Reef, rainforest, and outback, I was ready to see more of Queensland’s non-fatal side. What about a farm stay? I asked of the tourism people. “Well, ah, okay,” they said.

Nearly all Americans come to Queensland to dive the Reef. My request for a home on the range experience had them ruffling through their brochures.

“What kind of farm?” they asked.

“How about an alpaca farm?” I said.

“Al-what-a?” the woman said.

If nothing else, the Australians are persistent and not long after I was headed toward the Willow Park Alpaca Stud and Albion Farm Stay, home to a herd, rather “mob,” of fuzzy, funny-looking, and, most importantly, non-venomous alpacas. The worse they could do was gob some spit at you, I was told. Non-venomous spit.

I didn’t know much about alpacas. A few years earlier I had seen a mob of them in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Their fur was the king of all fibers I learned, more prized than cashmere or pashmina. Alpacas and an alpaca farm, I thought, might be the way out of my confined, urban apartment existence and to a long held back-to-the-land fantasy that once had me and my wife working on a goat farm. But unlike goats or cows, alpacas didn’t require milking twice a day. Aside from an annual shearing, they pretty much took care of themselves.

Driving through the Australian countryside, I passed towns with names that only Fred Flintstone could have conjured up. Towns like Biddaddaba. The welcoming sign for the city of Warwick informed me that I was passing through a “tidy town.” Albion was not far away. I began to daydream about my future as one of America’s great alpaca barons, rocking away on the porch of my alpaca Ponderosa, contemplating the fortunes of my mob with my feet up. Far away from the perils of sharks, and stingers, and spear grass, and crocodiles, I began to relax and enjoy Queensland’s gently rolling farm land.

My daydream came to an end at a small rural junction outside of Warwick where a sign pointed to the town of Albion. But a few minutes down the road I had more than covered the distance with no sign of a town. After turning around, I quickly arrived at Willow Park Stud, realizing that in rural Australia you don’t have to be as big as a town or village to have your own road sign. You can just be a house or a farm. Albion and Willow Park were one and the same.

Forty furry, long necked, absolutely goofy looking alpacas stood quietly clustered together in the large paddock. A few had been shorn and their odd, camelid features must have inspired George Lucas and his production designers when they first imagined some of the creatures that inhabit the world of Star Wars. Out strode Harry Liaubon, who together with wife Jen, owns Willow Park and has been in the alpaca business for 10 years.

Harry, with his stiff gray mustache, head of perfectly silver hair, and a broad, gap-tooth smile, looked more the retired Buckingham Palace guard than alpaca tycoon. On the “barbie” he had a six inch thick, butterflied leg of lamb that easily weighed 10 pounds.

“Do you have other guests?” I asked Harry who easily juggled cigarette, beer, and grill tools while swatting at the flies that should be Australia’s national bird.

“No Robby,” he said. “Just the three of us. It’ll cook down. You’ll see. No worries.”

“Australia,” I thought. “Big country. Big food.”

Over dinner Harry and Jen gave me a brief tutorial on alpacas. They’re a high plains animal from the Andes whose wool was once coveted for royal garments. Now they provide the yarn for the finest of woolen goods. An alpaca sweater at Neiman-Marcus, for example, can go for $500 or more.

At Albion, Harry and Jen raised the more common huacaya with its coat of puff-ball wool as well as suris whose wool hangs in long, tightly curled locks like the tassels of a flapper’s dress.

“Just feel this Robby,” Jen said. I plunged my hands in a large bag of alpaca fiber. Until someone begins weaving feathers or baby’s hair it will have no challengers.

I told Harry and Jen that I had come to Albion for a hands on experience. I wanted to know if alpacas were in my future. They shouldn’t coddle me. “Right,” Harry said, “No worries Robby. We can cut some teeth tomorrow.”

That sounded good -- until the next morning when I learned that Harry really meant cutting teeth -- alpaca teeth. For an alpaca, life at Willow Park is the gravy train. Without having to forage among the rocky plains of the Andean altiplano their teeth grow indefinitely, like beavers or woodchucks without wood to chuck.

“Problem is” Harry explained, “that when the machos (males) are battling for mates they tend to bite each others’ testicles. So we need to cut their teeth.” I briefly put myself in the male alpaca’s place. Have my teeth cut with a garden shears or have my testicles bitten by a romantic rival. It was a choice that made me want to forget about dating altogether.

Like goats, alpacas are gregarious animals. They like company. Trying to separate one from the mob is like trying to split a drop of mercury. Jen, Harry, the dog, and I eventually penned half a dozen animals in a small corral and then went after our intended, long toothed quarry, a pure, all-white suri named “Whitewater.” Chasing the quick, fuzzy, jumpy animals on wet grass pebbled with slippery alpaca droppings was the kind of activity guaranteed to appear on a “stupidest home videos” program. I, of course, had brought only one pair of pants.

Once we had Whitewater in his own corral, it was time for a bit of dental hygiene. But first, of course, we had to get a hold of him. Harry, 59, strong and wiry, demonstrated, walking slowly behind Whitewater before grabbing a fistful of wool under the neck while going for a headlock with his other arm. “Right,” he said freeing the animal, “Now you try it Robby.”

In my still semi-presentable pants, I cautiously approached Whitewater from behind as Harry had done. We stood about the same height, 5’7”. Harry told me the larger machos weigh about 180 pounds so Whitewater had me by 40 pounds. “I can do this,” I told myself.

With the animal in reach, I lunged. But my hands found nothing to grab. The first 6 inches of an unshorn alpaca is utter fluff. While I tried to reach deeper, Whitewater saw his chance and landed a crushing, backwards upper cut of the foreleg to my ribcage. As I struggled to hold on (and get my breath back), Harry quickly pried open Whitewater’s mouth to take a look at his testicle tearing teeth. “No,” he said, “this one can wait. But let’s give’m a pedicure since you’re so cozy and all.” Harry quickly clutched Whitewater’s feet and snipped off the overgrown, claw-like hooves with the same garden shears he would have used on Whitewater’s teeth.

Over lunch, Harry and Jen explained the economics of alpaca ranching. In Australia, an alpaca can live for 20 years while producing 7 to 11 pounds of wool each year. The wool sells for about $20 a pound so a good producer might earn a few hundred dollars annually. Yet a highly prized female or hembra can sell for $50,000 or more. Although I have an MBA from a prestigious business school, I couldn’t quite figure out the bottom line in this.

“Well, you see,” Jen said, “nowadays the business is in the breeding, not the wool.”

“You’re lucky if the wool pays for the feed,” Harry added.

Evidently, for years alpaca farming has been a coming thing. There are said to be only 10,000 alpacas outside South America, and ranchers have been waiting for the animal’s day to arrive. Meanwhile, long term alpaca breeders like Harry and Jen, he a retired automotive engineer, she a retired oncology nurse, have become well-to-do beyond their dreams. It all started because Jen saw an alpaca for sale that was so cute she couldn’t resist it.

“You’re looking at three quarters of a million out there Robby,” Harry said to me as we quietly rocked on the porch of his 40 acre Ponderosa.

“Really?” I said, amazed that so few animals could be so valuable.

“Course, I don’t mean to big note myself,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Big note myself?” he said. “Oh, I don’t mean to wave the flag is all” he added as a way of explanation before taking a drag on his cigarette and a pull on his beer.

Australians possess a bewildering multitude of peculiar expressions. It’s as though, separated from the rest of the world, the English language has evolved much in the same way Australia’s fauna has, resulting in expressions as unusual as the koala or platypus. Harry was simply trying to explain that he didn’t mean to boast about his and Jen’s success. These two unassuming alpaca farmers had become wealthy on an animal that costs far more to buy than it can ever recover with its fleece. I realized I could afford to become an alpaca rancher just about the same time I could afford to buy a home in San Francisco.

A few years ago Harry and Jen’s mob numbered 160. That was when they ranched near Melbourne. They moved north in search of peace and quiet. Rural Queensland is a quiet, slow moving place. Something like agricultural America 30 or 40 years ago. And in this vast quiet, Albion was very quiet. Not much more sound than the occasional bleating of a sheep or the wind rustling through the eucalyptus.

With my fantasies of an alpaca empire dashed, I resolved to learn what I could in the time I had left at Albion. With the animals so expensive, why, I wondered, wasn’t there more artificial insemination, which might bring the price down to where I could start out with an itsy-bitsy mob of 2 or 3 animals.

“Can’t do it Robby,” Harry began. “They’ve spent millions researching it. You see, the macho’s a dribbling ejaculator. You just can’t get enough of the stuff.”

“Well, I suppose you could try to catch some of it -- you know -- afterwards,” Jen said before going on to describe a process that could only interest an alpaca breeder or, possibly, a member of Ken Starr’s staff.

“And you see,” Jen added, “the hembra, well, she’s an opportunistic ovulator. You can’t really know when she might be ready.”

“She needs that warm and fuzzy feeling,” Harry said, before she’ll release an egg. Apparently a turkey baster just isn’t what fires a female alpaca’s libido.

For several days Harry and Jen had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of a baby alpaca or cria. Every couple of hours we went out to a small corral to see if Tammy, the pregnant hembra, had “unpacked.” I was scheduled to leave that afternoon but decided to stay another night, hoping to witness the cria’s birth. Jen said there was nothing cuter than a new born alpaca. I didn’t doubt it.

Over dinner that evening Harry and Jen confided to me that what they most like about alpaca farming are the clear nights when they go out into the paddock, hand in hand, lay down beneath the stars, and listen to the alpacas. “They make this delightful murmuring sound,” Jen explained.

Tammy didn’t unpack while I was at Albion but during my last night I did walk out into the paddock. Fires glowed along the dark horizon where farmers were burning their fields. The night sky was black and filled with unfamiliar stars. Huddled together against the slight chill, the mob lay quietly murmuring, their soft rumblings like a chorus of small brooks cascading through a mossy forest. Maybe I never would be able to afford an alpaca ranch of my own. But I had found a wonderful place in Queensland - a place where there was nothing to kill me but the quiet.

A version of this story originally appeared in the September 12, 1999 edition of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner Magazine.

The Ceremony of One Chip

The old stone dining room at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 12 miles inland from Big Sur, was filled to capacity and busy with conversation. The moment Edward Espe Brown entered, draped in the robes of a Zen priest, the quiet chitchat stopped. Author of vegetarian classics such as The Tassajara Bread Book, Tassajara Cooking and co-author (with Deborah Madison) of The Greens Cookbook, Ed was about to give an evening lecture, one of the three I would hear while participating in his workshop, "Cooking as a Spiritual Practice."

I had gone to Tassajara hoping to overcome my performance anxiety in the kitchen which, for years, has made every dinner party, every entertaining occasion, something to fear and dread rather than enjoy. In his workshop, Ed concentrated on the very basics. We tasted salt. We tasted pepper. We sharpened knives. We meditated.

At Tassajara, snuggled deep into the rugged Santa Lucia Mountains, there were no carbonated beverages, no meat, no junk food. We ate beautifully prepared vegetarian meals. We thought about food at its most elemental in our attempt to appreciate more deeply the joy and pleasure it can give.

Although Ed is highly regarded as a chef, it seemed at Tassajara he was more respected for his knowledge of dharma than of food. The room remained quiet as he settled into his chair, adjusted his robes and pulled the microphone close. I didn't expect instantaneous enlightenment from Ed's lecture but was hoping for something thought-provoking and profound. After what seemed like a very long time, he finally said, "I really don't have much to say this evening," and chuckled to himself.

The room grew quiet and solemnity had re-established itself when Ed reached down and began fidgeting with something in his bag. Although I couldn't see what it was, the crinkly sound was unmistakable. Ed had a bag of potato chips.

"Tonight we're going to perform the ceremony of eating just one chip," he announced.

Something, however, was already amiss. Someone had gotten into Ed's nine-ounce bag of Lay's, and he wasn't sure if there would be enough chips for the 100 or so people crowded in the room.

That problem appeared to be solved when several closely shorn Zen students raised their hands and asked the master what to do if they didn't want to eat even one chip. "Then you will celebrate the ceremony of not eating one chip," Ed answered. "In Zen," he noted, "the eating of one potato chip and the not eating of one potato chip are kind of the same thing."

When the bag finally came our way, the Zen student next to me rummaged around the bottom and found the tiniest shard, which he placed on the end of his finger as though he and the chip were auditioning for an Intel ad. My other neighbor dropped his chip. It broke in two. He looked at it, mortified. This was, after all, the ceremony of eating one chip and not two.

Ed instructed us how to approach our chips. Foremost was concentration. We were to "collect your mind. Attune your mind to the chip. Pay attention to the chip."

We were to use all our senses, our fingers, our eyes as well as our taste buds. He reminded us to be aware of our ears because "there will be some crunching going on." And we were to be mindful, meaning that we needed to be fully aware of what we were about to do.

Usually it is only foods that we don't care to eat or are repelled by that we give such close attention. I'm sure that I had never before been mindful of even one of the thousands of chips I have eaten. I took a good long look at my chip.

It was shaped like a girl's tongue caught in mid-giggle, a cute squiggle with a thin corona of gold running around its blond edge. I smelled it, and my nose filled with the familiar scent of grease and starch. I ran my tongue over its rough surface and sensed its salty effervescence. There seemed to be a lot of un-Zen like giggling going on as people inspected their own chips.

When we were finally told to eat our chips, there was a crunch more than worthy of one of Jay Leno's old Doritos television ads that used to shake the television screen. After digestion had begun, Ed asked people how the experience had been for them.

Some commented on the salty aftertaste. One person said just holding the single chip and waiting to eat it had made him very nervous about the whole enterprise. Others noted how the fingers and the mouth worked so well together. Several people were still working on the residue caught between their teeth. The conscientious objectors said they were surprised by the loudness of the crunch. A lone dissenter didn't quite get the point of the exercise, commenting, "But chips are meant to be eaten quickly and absentmindedly."

Ed told us that chips are perfect for what they are but because, like so many things in life, we take them for granted, we don't have a sense of them - no matter how many we have eaten. The whole notion, he explained, was to take the time, to have a careful awareness of whatever we are doing, or eating, or cooking, and not assume that we already know all that there is to know. Not even about the simple, guilty pleasure of a single potato chip.

After carefully observing a chip for the first time and fully experiencing its salty, greasy, pulpy "Buddha nature," Ed told us he was able to walk away from potato chips for several years.

"But now," he said, "I'm thinking they're pretty good again."

Me too.

A version of this story first appeared in the October 26, 1997 edition of the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle Magazine.

Hotel Paradiso-o

It was late. Too late to go back to Tokyo. Our guidebook had no information at all about Shin-Fuji, a small town between Osaka and Tokyo. From the railway station platform there was only one obvious place to stay, a five-story building a few blocks away. The sign on top advertised "Hotel -- 6,000 Yen."

When we arrived, there was no one at the front desk. There was no front desk -- just photos of the rooms along one wall. Two were illuminated, the rest were dark. We didn't know what to do. There was no one to ask. After four months of honeymoon travel on the road in Asia we were weary. We didn't have the energy to figure out another baffling cross-cultural situation.

A side door opened and an older man and a younger woman came in, all smiles and giddy. Unlike us, they had no luggage and seemed to know the routine. The man quickly withdrew a key from a cubbyhole. The adjacent photo instantly went dark. Tittering, the couple disappeared into the elevator.

"What do we do?" my wife said. "There's only one room left."

Before I could answer she was over at the wall. Gingerly, as though extracting the detonator from a bomb, she drew the last key from its slot. Tiny lights embedded in the floor began to flicker, outlining a path down the corridor. From around a corner the glow of a larger light pulsed. We moved cautiously ahead, as though caught in a tractor beam. We looked around. There was no one.

I had no idea what to expect. Even on our budget of $200 a day the astounding cost of everything in Japan had limited us to sex-segregated guesthouses and youth hostels. Now, without having checked in, without having spoken to anyone, without having left an imprint of our Visa card, we were about to enter a hotel room. I opened the door.

"Look at this!" Nina said. This room was huge, as big as a typical American hotel room and much bigger than any other place we had stayed in Japan. We exchanged our street shoes for the "house" slippers that waited on the threshold. The larger pair had a groom in a tuxedo embossed on the rubber toe piece. Nina's had a bride in white.

"They must know we're newlyweds," she said, leaping onto the bed. She held up the condoms and the origami lovebirds that had been left on the pillow. "They've thought of everything."

I opened the room service menu. There was no sushi on this menu. But there were a lot of things that looked like sushi. The most outlandish was adorned with small nubs and a collar that resembled an anemone from a Jacques Cousteau special. Apparently it cost 13,000 yen, batteries not included. I reflected on what had happened so far. The May-December couple with no luggage, no front desk, condoms on the pillow, and the very special room service menu. I knew we had stumbled onto something truly unusual. We had checked into our first Japanese love hotel.

We had heard about love hotels. "Abec hoteru," our guidebook called them -- discreet, fantasy getaways the Japanese use for afternoon and evening assignations. We had even looked for some, but, assuming they would resemble the tawdry, no-tell motels that line America's secondary thoroughfares, we were unable to find any. Now, without speaking to a person, without seeing a single employee, we were in one.

The room was replete with electronic gadgets straight out of Hugh Hefner's bedroom. There were remotes for everything: the lights, the 440 channels of music, the air-conditioning, the television, the bed.

"What are you doing?" Nina said. She had changed into a "yukata," one of the razor-crisp robes that came with the room.

"Hang on a second," I told her. "I've got to check this stuff out. I mean come on, I'm a guy."

"If you don't stop right now," she said, "I'm taking a shower."

I could feel the tension rising between us, but I couldn't help myself. The room was like Mission Control in Houston. Given what the menu had to offer, I had to find out what was on cable.

"I'll be there in a second," I told her.

"Some love hotel," she muttered and stalked out.

I toyed with everything. The fridge was a little automat, stocked with sushi and sandwiches just waiting for my 100-yen coins. There was a karaoke machine with dual mikes. The accompanying songbook was the size of the Manhattan directory and had every song of Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Webber, plus thousands of Japanese favorites. In one corner there was a small weight-lifting machine.

"What exactly do the Japanese do in these places?" I wondered.

A curious pneumatic tube system, the kind once used for billing in old-fashioned department stores, snaked out of the wall. I turned on the television. A man was binding up a woman in Saran Wrap. Clearly this was no Motel 6.

"C'mere, c'mere, c'mere," Nina cried from the bathroom. "Read these." She handed me a basket full of complimentary toiletries. On the tiny bag that held a "Hair Band," I read the caption. It seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it: "Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together. I've got some real estate here in my bag."

"'I've got some real estate here in my bag.' What is that supposed to mean?" I said.

Nina raced back to the bed. "Oh my God," she said, "that's from 'America.' Simon and Garfunkel were here."

I followed her back to bed, ready to resume the romance that had dwindled over the last few days as we pinched pennies on everything.

"What's that?" she said.

"What's what?"

"That," she said, pointing to the far wall where a red digital clock was pulsing with the seconds. It read "0:42." We looked at each other. The clock changed to "0:41." It was ticking down.

Suddenly the playfulness that had been building between us was gone. "What do you think this room costs?" Nina said.

"I don't know. The sign said 6,000 yen."

"Right," she said, "but do you think that's for an hour or all night?" I felt my chest constrict, and it wasn't from what I'd seen on the television.

We had already seen a $70 cantaloupe and a $100 mushroom for sale and had heard about bars where beer costs $300 a bottle. Before I could complete the thought Nina said, "What if it's 6,000 yen an hour?!" It was a great room, but we didn't have $600 to spend for one night. I began to panic. I picked up the phone. A woman answered.

"Hello, do you speak English?" I asked. At first I thought she said, "What do you think of our sushi?" but then I realized she was speaking Japanese. "How much does this room cost?" I asked anyway, wondering how one counts above 1,000 in Japanese.

Nina handed me a brochure from the Japan National Tourist Organization. It had all the standard questions and answers needed by tourists written in both English and Japanese. The tourist, me, is supposed to point to the questions and the happy-to-assist Japanese person is supposed to point to the correct answer. It works less well on the telephone.

I opened to the hotel section and said, "Kono heya wa ikura desu ka?" which, according to the book, means, "How much is this room?" This unleashed an immediate answer I didn't understand at all, except that it sounded like "$1,200 or whatever you have left -- whichever is more." Sweat began beading on my forehead.

By now my bride was laughing hysterically. My mind strayed from the raison d'être of love hotels and began to focus on the Japanese penal system. "Maybe we should leave now," I suggested.

"Are you crazy?" Nina said. "It's after midnight. We're going to sleep. I don't care what it costs."

"Right," I thought. "This is why the groom's family pays for the honeymoon." As I put my head down, I saw traveler's checks flying out of my wallet. The digital clock clicked down to "0:08."

"What's that?" Nina said. Someone was knocking at the door. The digital clock pulsed "0:00." In the hallway a dissolute Japanese woman waited. The minute she saw me she began speaking rapidly in Japanese. When she finished I patted myself on the chest with both hands the way Indians used to do in old Westerns and said, "English." Evidently she was unable to pick up the language from this gesture and took off again in Japanese. Somewhere in her stream of words an island rose above the torrent. "Check-out-o" I thought I heard her say.

"Check-out-o?" I asked.

"Check-out-o," she insisted.

Now the picture began to clear. The clock had ticked down. Our time was up. I had heard a "kerplunk" in the pneumatic tube. When I hadn't put in my money this woman was sent out to collect.

"No check-out-o," I said. I put my hands to the side of my head like the woman in the Singapore Airlines ad and repeated, "No check-out-o. Sleep-o."

She started up again in Japanese. I gestured for the woman to come inside the room. She threw her hands up in front of her face and waved them back and forth as though trying to stop a runaway train. She wasn't coming in. Even love hotels have rules.

From the bed Nina called, "Try the book." I retrieved the pamphlet, hoping it might work better face to face than it had over the phone.

In the pamphlet I pointed to "How much does this room cost?" She wrote 6,000¥ on her palm. Still, I didn't know if that was per hour, for two hours, for the time we had been there, or what. With book, pen, and a rudimentary written language that consisted of these symbols -- ¥ -- ? --> -- together with the hours of the day written in the 24-hour clock of the military, I was able to figure out that our first two hours cost 6,000 yen and the rest of the night would be another 6,000 yen. I paid her the money. I wasn't ready for the challenge of the pneumatic tube.

"Only 6,000 yen for midnight to 10 a.m.," Nina said. "That's not bad."

It's true we had been spending nearly that amount to stay in separate bunkrooms with Korean schoolkids on vacation. If love hotels were all like the "Dear Hotel," it looked like the reasonable and romantic way to see Japan.

The next day we were off to Nikko, an alpine town north of Tokyo famous for its temples and natural beauty. "To hell with natural beauty," Nina said. "We've got plenty in California. Let's find another love hotel."

Although well known to the Japanese, the locations of love hotels are not mentioned in guidebooks. After quickly seeing the sights of Nikko, we went to tourist information. An older, genteel Japanese woman stood at the desk.

"You ask her," I said to Nina.

"I'm not asking her," Nina said. "She's like a grandmother."

As we glared at each other, the lady asked in perfect English, "May I help you?"

I looked at this lovely woman who was waiting patiently. I couldn't do it. What would she think of Americans if I asked her about an abec hoteru? I gathered my courage. At last I asked, "Is there a bank anywhere near here?"

The clerk at the bank was a young man who also spoke English. After we changed money I gestured that he should come closer. From inches away I whispered, "Can you tell me if there is an abec hoteru around here?"

"Abec hoteru?" he restated at full voice, apparently not constrained by any prudish American convention regarding places for sexual trysts. "Just moment please." He then turned to a female teller and began a conversation in Japanese that sounded something like Abbott and Costello's "Who's on first?" routine, with abec hoteru running the bases. After much discussion that involved the entire staff of the bank as well as the use of several maps, he directed us to a hotel up the street. When we got there a dozen elderly women were getting off tour buses and checking in. Something had gotten lost in the translation.

"What should we do?" Nina asked.

To get to Nikko we had changed trains in Utsunomiya, a small junction town. The bullet train had sped past a bright neon sign for "The James Dean Hotel." It had to be what we were looking for.

"Let's go back to the James Dean," I suggested.

By the time we returned to Utsunomiya it was already past 10 p.m. Nina suggested taking a taxi, but the flag-fall was 600 yen and every mile was about that much again. Getting to the James Dean could cost a fortune. Besides, it seemed to me the hotel was near the station. I figured we could walk. As we learned an hour later, it's difficult to judge distances while on a train going 180 miles per hour.

Pulling our suitcases behind us, we were soon trudging down narrow roads on the outskirts of town. I could see the neon glow on the far horizon. Like desperate gamblers low on gas it drew us on like the distant lights of Las Vegas. We were walking through rice fields and around agricultural warehouses. The roads were empty. But the lights were getting closer. So was an odd, rhythmic sound.

Thhhh-kwack! We heard. Thhh-kwack! Thhh-kwack! We turned a corner. In front of a convenience store a man and a woman were hitting golf balls tied to an elastic cord. Thhhh-kwack! The ball took off, fell to the ground and snapped back to the tee.

We stopped and watched them. They stopped and watched us -- two gaijin pulling suitcases in the middle of nowhere at midnight. And we thought they were strange. We continued on. They watched us leave. Thhh-kwack!

We were absolutely beat when we got to the James Dean. It was in an enclave of love hotels. Next door was the Passion, a metallic, futuristic castle. Down the street was the Chalet, an ersatz Tudor building with turrets worthy of Rapunzel's affection. Each had individual parking spaces for each room. The couple pulls in, closes a curtain behind the car and goes directly inside without being seen by anyone. We circumnavigated the building. All the garage curtains were drawn closed. We had shortchanged the historical wonders of Nikko. We had walked for more than an hour. And now, at midnight, on a Thursday, the James Dean was full.

We wheeled our bags across the street to the Cosmo Part II. Each of us and each of our bags tripped the electronic sensor at the gate. No doubt wondering how four cars could pull in at the same time, the proprietor, an old man in slippers with a cordless phone, shuffled out. From my experience the night before I was now nearly fluent in love hotel Japanese.

"Check-in-o," I said.

"Hai, check-in-o," the old man responded. He then asked, "Rest-o?"

I shook my head no and said, "Stay-o."

"Rest-o" is the word for the two-hour tryst enjoyed morning, noon and night by seemingly every person in Utsunomiya and the rest of Japan. "Stay-o," which runs overnight, begins only when most lovers have gone home to spouses or parents. If one can wait around, a stay-o costs much less than a traditional hotel and comes with more exciting fixtures.

The proprietor showed us a graphic display of the rooms. We chose the "disco" room. Our stay-o in rural Utsunomiya would cost 6,000 yen.

"It's better than last night," Nina said. The room was twice as spacious as our room at the Dear. Not only did it have everything the Dear had, but it had a sauna, a large selection of adult video tapes and, directly above the bed, the pièce de résistance, the item I had wanted above my bed ever since junior high, a rotating mirrored ball. I started surfing the music system in search of "Disco Inferno."

The phone rang. I picked it up. I heard the old man's voice. "Front-o," he said.

"What do you think he wants?" I asked Nina. I went downstairs.

At the foot of the stairs was a small trap door, the kind used by milkmen for home delivery. The old man's arms were jutting through, a small Coca-Cola bottle in each hand.

"For you," he said in English. "For American friend." It was the most touching thing anyone had done for us in Japan.

After we finished with the bath and the sauna we were ready for bed. "Do you want to see what's on TV?" Nina said softly, raising her eyebrows in a coy, newlywed kind of way. We had never watched any adult anything before. "It could be educational."

I clicked the set on. Evidently the Japanese have a thing for fresh foods because again a man was sealing a woman up with plastic wrap.

"Oh my God. I can't watch this," Nina said. "Turn it off. No, don't turn it off. No, I've got to watch this."

We watched until the woman looked like she would stay fresh until at least tomorrow. The man began to undress. As the camera dropped to follow the action, the anatomically correct, precisely outlined parts of the image became blurred, digitally scrambled. This didn't conceal the faces of the actors but only the areas most people are interested in seeing when watching these films.

The sexual encounter that followed was like watching two pulsing, swirling lava flows merging with one another. Everything was rendered in a wild paisley.

"What is this?" Nina asked. "Are they trying to protect us from something? We're in a love hotel."

"Yes, we are," I said, turning on the rotating mirrored ball above the bed. Little ovals of reflected light spun around the room. I drew her near.

"Wait a minute," she interrupted. "Don't you think you should ... you know, sing some karaoke? Or do some weight lifting? That machine is going to waste." Laughing, she added, "Oh, I don't understand this country at all."

The next morning, before leaving, I put 200 yen in the karaoke machine and crooned my own rendition of "You're Just Too Good to Be True." Nina woke up just in time to see me hop on the weight machine for a quick twenty reps. I then brewed two cups of complimentary coffee. Fully pumped up, I pulled the karaoke mike into bed. Nina looked at me and said, "I think it's time for us to leave."

By the time we returned to Tokyo, we were expert love hotel spotters. Near railroad stations they seemed to comprise entire blocks. They dotted residential neighborhoods. How could we have overlooked places with names, English names, like the Happy Heart Hotel, the Once Around, the Sweet Night Inn? Even the Japanese neon signs took on a certain stimulating familiarity. We became fluent in identifying the essential characteristics of love hotels: the wild architecture, the wilder names, the continuous streams of cars and pedestrians, and, always, the sign out front with the prices.

After four months of honeymoon travel by plane, train, car, boat, and motorcycle, it was now time to head home. Ours had been an amazing journey where each day contained an element of the surreal. We had hoped to go on to Europe, but time and budget prevented that. So, in lieu of Paris, we spent our last night in Tokyo at Le Chic where all the little sayings on the toiletries were in French. We used the room to its fullest. No gizmo was left untouched. When we were finally exhausted, when we had taken advantage of everything Le Chic had to offer, I dimmed the lights and tucked Nina in. I put a few coins in the karaoke machine and softly began singing Chansons d'Amour. Paris had nothing more to offer.

A version of this story originally appeared in West, the Sunday magazine of the San Jose Mercury News, in June 1995. It has since been published in many magazines, newspapers and anthologies (and plagiarized repeatedly).