SNOWBALL

The appearance of the youth hostel I stayed in NY.
I came to feel being stuffed in the darkroom with those strangers in a room in the youth hostel and got up in very early morning, headed for nearest doughnut shop.
It was freezing cold winter with the temperature of minus15.
I stayed in NY a week and stayed in the hostel whole the week.
Excluding the arriving day and the last day, I stayed 4 days in the hostel.
Still now, I'm not confortable with youth hostel.I want more private zone.

I'll tell a story that I actually experienced in NY.
The area I stayed was really close to the Harlem area.Now I would not care if I have to stay in Harlem area as long as I could secure a private room because I have stayed in even worse area in Van.But at the time, I had almost few experience oversea.
I was watching around my sorroundings and very careful.
I think partly that carefulness cause it, my behavior and way of walking might be appeared a little akward and being scared somehow.
I watched a musical and had a good time with a friend who lived in NY then I headed for the youth hostel.I was walking with my head leaning down.Some homeless people caught my eyes.I had noticed that it was a kind of a residencial area mainly lower middle social economic class family people being clustered in.
I wondered if I was walking within a personal property.

Then.

BONK!!

I felt something hit my back pack that was a snow ball.
I turned around and looked at behind, there were 4 people and 2 of them who I thought they look Juniorhigh students were slowing snow balls, and I thought those another 2 were their parents.I felt a kind of intention to get me out of the area.
I walked even faster and past through the area soon.
It was more than 3 years ago so I can't remember it clearly though I remember one of those 4 jeered to me.

NY subways

The first time I was being in NY, I found it strange somehow that the Japanese girl singers Puffy apeared on advertisements sometimes.
I remembered that they were performing their concerts in the U.S..
People in the US would say they look young as their real age early30s.
That is a trait of Japanese girls.
Not only girls but boys, myself too.Back in Canada, I was looked young as my real age nevertheless I was called as OJISAN(a middle aged man) in Japan.

So, speaking of NY, I had oftenly connected its image with subways.
In reality, NY's subways have particular atomosphere, first of all, it is dark because it's underground though, and second dirty.
They used to be known as grafityful cars until a decade ago.It's changed.
They have installed grafity proof cars.

The first time I went NY I noticed that even though their cars were clean, there were other type of grafities on the glasses of windows, not spray paints but they colored white and scratch like marks.

Months after that, I saw some TV program in Japan that featured grafities on the trains in NY.
They said those new grafities are painted with special solvent with strong acid.
Those new paint solve the surface of the glass and make the white scratch like mark.
And with their acid trait, you would be burnt if you touch them when they are still wet.

They are no longer grafities because they damaged the body of the cars.
In the cases with spray paint, they can be erased but these can't be.

NY in winter...freezing cold like hell.

This is a photo when the second time I went to NY.
As you can tell from the picture, it was so cold.
It was in December 2004.
The first time in NY for me was in August in the same year.

I took this picture from inside of a Mcdonard's in soho in NY.
My hotel was located in upper west side, on the w105th street.
I was so excited from this tour because this was the second time for traveling abroad for me.
The first time was in NY, and the second time was too.
So I woke up in the really early morning( I think it was 5a.m. or so )and took a quick shower and went out of the hotel.
It was the first time I stayed in a youth hostel and shared a room with other people.
And at that time, my English was not so good, and had trouble making myself understood every turn.I had already taken a liking of having cinversations with foreigners though that was a really frustrating situation.
I had started studying English in September 2003 as I remember so this was only 15 months after I had started studying the language.

The first time I came to NY, I was so shy and hesitate to have a conversation with people in the hotel.
So this was the second chance.
This was a youth hostel, so we all share the space.
I woke up in the early morning and left the room and came back to the room midnight so some were already in the bed.But I was so sure that others were keeping aware of me because people are in general watching each other in the youth hostel especially like the one without a safe nor a locker.
As for me, I was holding my passport in the porch inside the cloth with a strap and wearing tight pants and kept my wallet in the pocket.


Anyway, I left the hotel 5:30 in the morning and there were no restaurant open and I headed for doughnuts shop to kill time.
It was really really cold but I couldn't help but go out of the room, because I was so excited with the travel and unconfortable with strangers in the room.
It was minus 15 degree celsius or so.
I tried to keep warmth in some restaurants.
I kept walking and got into a Macdonard's or a starbuck's every 30 minutes.
I noticed that my body was consuming so much energy in a short time and started shivering, getting tired.
The body seemed to combust much of carbohydorate in a short time.
Finally I got to the soho area in NY downtown the upper photo is the one I took from the window in the restaurant.


A couple of years before I came to NY, I had gone to Hokkaido which average temperature was minus 5, even compare to Hokkaido it was even much colder that was awesome.
In Vancouver the lowest temperature I had experienced was minus 10.