Such thoughts can occur fleetingly as one moves through an almost impenetrable crowd of people with no purposeful directions. As soon as the buildings ceased their dangerous dances, I exited the at high speed making way for the subway, pausing only long enough to gulp down my coffee and gather snapshots (some mental, some celluloid) of the invariably shocked faces of all I passed. Most women clutched at whatever stood nearest, whether it be their man attempting stoic strength, their non-comprehending children (no, no honey, the devils aren’t coming just yet) or the telephone pole by the delivery van of unloaded mannequin limbs with its radio blaring bulletins of “Do Not Panic” and “Tsunami Warning” intermittently. Regardless of fear level or even age everyone had their mobile phone out either snapping pictures of the sky or jamming up the satellites with calls to mom, grandma, someone, anywhere to do something, right, you can can’t you? I found an entrance just past a coagulation of chefs & their off-duty biker friends guffawing nervously and chain-smoking and I made my way down past the rough current of hundreds fighting to get up. I found the locker where I had stashed my things, made a quick combination and dropping the dross (including a good bottle of sake I had no hands for) into a shopping bag I madeway for the entrance where the worried-looking olive-uniformed head of the Tenjin subway stop had commenced to announce from a malfunctioning bullhorn that “Due to…earthquake…skrwk…appened to-today here an…krrabggttt…veral aftershocks which will no doubt be c…dfhdksd soon as well as the tidal wave…qweunenks that will soon be here we mu…sreeeuuk…grievously apologize that…xxervttx…should exit the underground…kerrauwkk!” and turning to me and waving his hands mime-ishly and pursing his lips and puffing up his cheeks shouted, “Go Away! Big Tsunami Come! Go Away!” as he followed his slim, male, hand-on-hat team to the door which no doubt led to safety. I madeway up to ground level snagging my bag along the way and dropping it off at the bum’s multilevel cardboard living space, which had held together quite well. I noticed him and his partners dutifully sweeping up the sidewalk, ignoring the gawking, shouting pedestrians purposelessly crowding everywhere like joyless people at a zoo of bored animals cleaning up the place.
I jumped on an empty bus heading toward Hakata, Fukuoka’s main station which no doubt had cancelled all local trains and shinkansen and was rerouting busses to compensate for the overflow and from where I could easily catch a taxi to the airport. Usually. I boarded another world when I got on that passengerless bus, that elaborate though simple setting of the movie theater prior to a screening: hushed and with an air of fog due to the projector’s cell-less light casting a shadow upon drawn velveteen drapes. I sat in the middle and awaited my show. Rise curtain, rise! Screw the trailers, give me the grit and gore! Encore! Bravo! More More! The abstract terror and imperceptible shock the earthquake had could easily be read in the multitudinous faces blending together in a mad panoramic of horror stretching city block to city block as I passed them behind my cold scrim of glass. They stared and pointed. I stared, they pointed. They slowly became one, their faces blending together, like an ever-hastening flipbook. And I felt strangely like the jolt hadn’t actually happened to me but to this collective “one” and I had become some intruder barging in on “his” collective pain. Just as the exclusion hit me the theater/bus came to a grinding halt and, in thrusting open its doors, let in the subjects of my curiosity-the afflicted-whom streamed in, gasping and pushing all talking to themselves, congratulating themselves on the luck they somehow acquired for making this showing/riding, for which a thousand strong now clamored just outside the small metal doors, just below the loudspeaker announcing “Regretfully folks, this showing is all full up, as you can see, but Fear Not, for another more beautiful showing can be seen in 15 minutes to an hour. Thank You. Watch your heads, we’re moving folks!” in just a tad over-the-top Vincent Price deadpan.
A 20-minute montage of scattered faces amid screaming engines later the wannabe-mockumentary short film-ride ended with a high-pressure gush and release of people not knowing where to go or what to do. No trains, no busses and a 5000+ queue thronging from out of the station like a burst heart spewing confused blood with no range to roam. Hailing a taxi I pummeled past the pointing hands and gawking faces and jumping into the open door ordered in a harsh Japanese to “step on it to the airport!” not knowing, though soon realizing, I had found the most dangerous, most knowledgeable taxi driver in all of Fukuoka. His speed tactics threw me into a reminiscence of long ago Baja Mexico drunken revelry where the taxista asking me in his astounding broken English if I wanted to take the scenic route. Me answering in my impure Barcelona accent of course, my friend, tonight is a good night for scenery and him smiling devilishly driving atop the sandy beachfront, dodging the incoming breakers, the randy mongrels and the occasional bonfire. There’s nothing like a cabbie passing his well-worn bottle of tequila over the seat amidst the waning moonlit dunes of the baja peninsula. Just like a cabbie who knows the backstreets of Japan like the back of god’s hand and gets you to the airport in 5 minutes, with just enough time to give the metal detectors ample opportunity to dissect my still quaking ass.
Then comes Seoul and a whole new Asia: The Mainland. The dirt. The sewer. The stank. The touchy-feel. The lack of personal space. The realness. The sex. The sweat. The Soju. The refreshing feel of a nonapologetic society. The heady crush of 12,000,000 bumping and grinding upon sidewalks, subways & stairways leaves a bit of a wry smile in the corner of my mouth. The rough and dirty remains always wins out when measured against the demure and submissive. But as comparisons are odious let’s get to the real dirt: Arrive Inch’on Int’l 15:20. Arrive Seoul 16:30. Arrive Windroad Hostel 17:00. Walk random Hyewha area streets reminiscent of backalley Shibuya lost hillside streets full of good Korean izakaya-style eateries whose signs confuse the non-Korean speaker like a mirror backside down with their supposed linguistic perfection. 18:00-ish spy a Japanese lantern with うどん(udon) scribbled perfectly welcoming to my beautifully lost eyes. I scampered in to the nearly deserted restaurant to a mouthful of いらっしゃいませ! (Come on in!) and an invitation to the second floor mamasan who speaks great Japanese and loves onsen and suggests the kimchi-udon, which tastes great. We converse until a strangely oblong and short man with a triangular face and a scar running cheek to neck enters and takes a seat just behind me. I glance absently at him and he stares blankly back, an obtrusive “Up Yours Mayn!” of a glare. That is, until he attempts to order in an unmistakably Cantonese-inflected English and the Japanese-speaking mama-san taps me politely on the shoulder saying, “なんって？ (Huh?). I ask the guy if he speaks English and as he nods I ask him what he wants to eat. Noodles. Ok. There’s this and this. Meat. Um, sorry, no meat. Shrimp, seafood, no meat. What?! Sorry, bro. Ok, noodles, this, this Kanji （鍋）means Pot, right. Gimme That. Nabe? Um, yeah, pot, meat, noodles, ok? Ok, mama-san, you got that? はい、わかりました (yeah, I got it.)
He gets rice and yaki-ebi and a bowl of miso. It’s ok, he mumbles, stomach needs food. He eats greedily. Finishes. Ehh. Huh? Buy you a green bottle? Ehh? The Korean drink…the green bottle, you know? Yeah bro, have a seat. Let’s get a drink.
He pulls up his chair and asks what I’m doing in Seoul, how I can speak Korean and how big of a drinker I am and orders a bottle of Soju all in the span of a few seconds.
“Let’s see, yes? You know how to drink like Korean?”
“Shit man, I pour, you drink, vice versa. By the way, I was speaking Japanese back there, I’m in Seoul on business and I can handle my own when it comes to the bottle, whatever bottle.”
He pours. I pour. We shoot. “Business. Me too. What business you do?”
“I’m an English teacher in Japan.”
“You lie! Drink! Shut-up-Drink! No one do that man. Japanese don’t speak English!”
“Umm, ok, ya got me. If you must know, I’m a Mossad double agent tracking a Palestinian terror cell trying to get to Pyongyang posing as a porn photographer just back from Japan. You know, freedom and democracy, for one and all, right.“
After teh quake it's all a blur
“Man, fuck you man! Drink! Fuck democracy, man! I’m China. I’m Hong Kong. We Communist. But I’m rich…how you say you understand that: rich communist, who not in government, just regular, everyday businessman, likes girls. Look this: today bought my girlfriend some jewels. Cheap. Look good tho yeah. My wife too. But this place scare me man, every Asia place scare me, ‘cept the woman, you know like nice young, soft virgin, young, like new piece of wood, so smooth. Man, you Americans, you think you Big Democracy, Big World power, but you worse than China. China good compare to you. At least China no lie to people. Americans stupid they think Bush no lie to them. More stupid they think it ok to lie to protect ‘nation secrets’. Drink man! One more bottle, you think? Man, China government say, ‘China people listen: we give you what you want if you let us have only one government party.’ We say: ‘yeah, you sure? We want money.’ Government say: ‘good, we too. We bring internet. You run business. We run government. You butt out we let you get rich, drunk, have women. Deal?’ Chinese people say: ‘fuck yeah!’ we don’t care ‘bout air and water but we know it’s bad. We know too many people. Billion fuckin’ people man in China, lot in India too, man, it’s no good, but what you do? You only one and one can’t stop government so let them be government and you be man and have money and drink- DRINK! – and have women and laugh man, life over too quick. Here my card man, Billy Wong, you call me Billy, you call me man, come to Hong Kong, I give you everything you ever need man, you never leave man, girls so good you never can think of nothing else, you never need coffee keep you awake man, never need no stupid fat American drug to get your dick hard man, stupid Americans so lazy don’t even like real sex anymore just sex with fucking fake tit ugly girls. Man Americans have it so good too good and they so stupid don’t know how to use what they have don’t know how to have real fun only know how to piss off world and be stupid and say ‘no world, we big nice country protect world from terrorist!’ maybe American people stupid man but world people not so stupid man, we know, China know America real terrorist, give money to bin laden and terrorist for oil. But man, you see, China don’t care man, China just too big to care about stupid American people. We been here since the beginning and you think we won’t be here till end you stupid too. America like a fad man a funny joke man, they like big balloon go pop soon man, but China we be here long time we don’t care what you say communist republican socialist you call an asshole an asshole. Man, you drink. You drink now Manny!”
“Yeah, ok Billy I’ll drink Billy. I’ll drink to you and to me and to tonight and to the pretty little Korean girls around us here listening to us kick up the dirt but that’s it. I’m not drinking to China or America, just us and now, Billy. Right now.”
“Cool man, I fuckin’ drunk man.”
Cool indeed.
I am a documentary and portrait photographer, specializing in a raw approach to shooting everything under the sun. Though I travel abroad often, I am currently based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and am available for assignments throughout North America and beyond.
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All content © 2012 by Manny Santiago Photography