“Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of pure imagination. Take a look, and you’ll see, into your imagination. What we’ll see, will defy explanation.” – Willy Wonka

Unlike Mr. Wonka’s devilishly delicious Chocolate Room, everything you see in Don Quijote, Japan’s bizarro chain of discount stores, isn’t edible. Check back in 10 years, though: considering the company’s braintrust has already built a rooftop rollercoaster half-pipe at one of its locations in the heart of Tokyo’s Roppongi district, lickable wallpaper and rivers of chocolate might not be totally out of question.

Don Quijote stores are spreading like wildfire across the country. Debuting in 1980 as the Just Co. before changing its name in the mid-90s, Don Quijote now has over 120 branches around Japan, including almost 40(!) in Tokyo alone. With its popularity soaring there are almost certainly more on the way, and it just might be the next big Japanese import to hit the States, too: there are already a few stores open in Hawaii.

It’s easy to get lost in these shopping funhouses, which are stuffed with an amazing hodgepodge of useless junk, everyday practicalities, food, electronics, designer handbags, sex toys, you name it; think .99 Cent Store meets Wal-Mart in Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland. Perhaps best of all, branches in Tokyo stay open really late—like 2 – 5am late—and many are open 24 hours. A few sips of soju at the hotel, fresh pieces of gently blowtorched salmon at a stand-up sushi bar in Shinjuku, bar snacks and a few bottles of Kirin somewhere in “Piss Alley“, and a stagger around the nearest Don Quijote before calling it a day: that’s my idea of a quality night on the town in Tokyo.

A Store of Pure Imagination

Like most Japanese storefronts, the signange on Don Quijote stores is only in Japanese. Look for for the company’s distinctive logo, a blue duck (penguin?) with big, googly eyes and a red cap; addresses and maps are also found on the English website.

There’s little rhyme or reason to what’s stocked across the four or five levels that make up most branches. Ground floors usually function as mini-markets: all kinds of candy, snacks, cheese, dried foods, canned foods, instant noodles, packaged fish, gourmet imports, cold beer, boxed wine, top-shelf liquor… it’s insane, and actually one of the more affordable options in Tokyo for stocking up your hotel room.

Elsewhere it’s an offbeat clearinghouse of anything and everything under the sun packed into an unforgettable shopping labyrinth. One aisle might be filled with common household goods like vacuum-cleaner bags and waste baskets, the next with dildos of all shapes and sizes and pornos of every imaginable variety. Need a refrigerator, set of miniature Dragon Ball Z figures, iPod, or cheerleader/maid/schoolgirl costume? Browse and ye shall find.

But my favorite item of all, one we have way too many pictures of and way too many ridiculous poses with, was the g-string butt pillow. Priced at just US$10 or so, we were tempted to haul a few of these appropriately soft and impossibly classy finds back home for birthday presents friends and family would forever appreciate; sorry, guys, maybe next time.

We found those pillows during a late-night shop at one of the Shinjuku outlets, which was a short walk away from the straight-laced Hotel Sunroute Shinjuku-Higashi, our home for the last few days in Tokyo. Back in our cramped little room, cold and dripping wet from a steady springtime drizzle that made the city feel somewhere between cozy and miserable, we flipped through our latest round of Don Quijote photos and caught up on our journals.

On TV, talking Japanese cartoon dogs taught must-know English phrases to the audience such as “why don’t you give me a nice smile?” and “how do you feel about me going shopping with her?”

Who needs Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory when we have Japan?

Photos © Brian Spencer

I was shooting some video for my local Round Rock TX tourism organization when I discovered that one of our parks (just a few miles down the road from my house) has a world-class professional disc golf course.

Since it is springtime here in Central Texas (complete with amazing wildflowers) I shot a photo of what has become the “Sports Capital of Texas” symbol – a Texas flag folding chair – amongst the bluebonnets and next to one of the disc golf baskets on the course for a recent women’s disc golf championship tournament.

Wow, what’s next to discover right under my nose….cricket fields?

Um, yes, there’s a Central Texas Cricket League.

I love my town.

Just like cake goes with coffee and cream cheese with bagels, Dave Fox’s book Globejotting goes with Lavinia Spalding’s  book Writing Away. Sure you could read only one or the other and learn a great deal about writing a travel journal. But together, these two books cover pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about the fine art of travel journaling.

Dave Fox’s Globejotting, with his spot on ideas about using all the senses and utilizing alternative journaling techniques, got me jumped up about travel journal writing.

As soon as I finished the book, I wanted to rush out and buy the first blank journal I could find to write in. But it was late at night and the shops were closed. So  I started reading Lavinia Spalding’s Writing Away, a creative guide to awakening the journal-writing traveler, instead.

And was soon very glad I did.

Who knew how complicated purchasing a blank journal could be.

There were decisions to be made: lined or unlined, large or small, moleskin or recycled.

Turns out  choosing a blank  journal is an important part of the whole travel journaling adventure, not something you rush into on a whim.

Furthermore, there’s the issue of what type of writing apparatus to use. After all, one that smudges, leaks, or fails to perform could lead to more than just writer’s block.

A dedicated traveler and journaler, Lavinia Spalding takes the reader through this maze of issues, defining not only the tools of the trade but also the techniques that will, hopefully, ensure a successful travel journaling adventure.

The book is jam packed with quotes from famous and not-so-famous people, set out to inspire and encourage.  Along side there are plenty of travel journal examples and Q & A’s to learn from.

In fact, the whole book inspires  not only the writer but also the inner artist. When travelling, Lavinia suggests collecting titbits to glue into the journal, start sketching (it doesn’t matter how good it is), ask for directions and get a local to draw a map, keep tickets.  After all, it doesn’t always have to be only about the words.

Perhaps even more importantly, Lavinia suggests not to wait until the trip starts to start writing. Planning and anticipating the travel is all part of the journey – not writing about it is like missing the first act of a play.

Which means I’d better start writing away.

But first, I have to decide, is this my moleskin moment?

A demure woman prepares for a cooking demonstration at the Rundle Street Mall in Adelaide, Australia.

Her modest, long-sleeved brown and blue checked dress and her center-parted and feathered hair are picture-perfect late 1970s housewife — which makes sense, since it is 1981. She’s got a microphone to help raise her voice over the cheery mall music, and soon she’s ready to begin the creation of Murray River Punch.

“One of the most wonderful things about this beverage is you don’t have to buy anything much,” she says, as she busies herself over a portable gas burner.  She starts with deoxidized water, and then, using the exact cooking show patois and intonation that recalls Julia Child, calls for the next ingredient.

“A quarter cup of human urine,” she says.

“Just collect a bit of human urine and set it aside. To complement that, you should have some human feces. Here we are. Collect it in the morning…wrap it up to keep it fresh. So in that goes. Right. Now, chop it up…like so. As you know, sewage goes straight into the water so this is really quite an important ingredient to get the full effect, the taste of the punch. Mix it up with the hand blender. You can use an electric blender for doing this, too of course. But for public demonstrations I’ve found it much too noisy.”

And so it goes on, with the woman — actually, the experimental artist Bonita Ely — adding toilet paper  (“you don’t have to shred it or anything like that, as you know, toilet paper is very absorbent”),  fertilizer (“two tablespoons of fertilizer should do it, I should think. It’s an important addition of flavors to the drink”), European carp which were introduced into the river and became invasive, lots of salt, chemicals and insecticide. (“If you want to make this drink even more interesting, add a defoliant, like Agent Orange for instance. But I think we’ll just stick to the insecticide today.”)  And then she’s done.

“Oh, my mouth is just absolutely watering,” she says. “It looks absolutely wonderful.”

I saw stills of this performance in Melbourne last month at the Ian Potter Centre at the National Gallery of Victoria, part of the museum’s permanent collection of contemporary work, much of which had a strong political theme. (If you’re not getting to Melbourne any time soon,  watch and listen to the work here.)  Ely’s been following this troubled  South Australian river since 1977, and released a series of photographs in 2008 and from a time of drought in 2009.

You can talk about river pollution in terms of sediment, run-off, invasive foreign species and other abstractions for hours and hours, but nothing makes you understand the issue quite as well as watching how a particular river got that way — and contemplating the results in a decorative punch bowl, elegantly garnished with rabbit dung.

On Earth Day 2010, this Thursday, have a drink (of something else) to that.

When it comes to keeping a travel journal, I always have the greatest of intentions. Unfortunately, what starts off with a bang usually ends in a whimper around day 3 or 4 of my travels. Then it becomes hit and miss. Some days I sit down and write, other days I never even pick up a pen.

The only time I actually managed to journal consistently  was during the year I spent working in Saudi Arabia. And it wasn’t even what you could call proper journalng. Instead it was regular, often daily, long and drawn out emails and postcards to friends and family ranting and raving about events, places, and people.

But with a three month travel stint on the horizon, I am once again determined to keep a travel journal. Only this time, I am enlisting the help of two travel journal experts – Dave Fox and Lavina Spalding.  Successful travel writers, they have both recently published books on how to write great travel journals.

In Globejotting, Dave Fox hilariously combines his own travel journal excerpts with advice and writing exercises. The book’s first paragraph ‘You’re going on a big trip? Woohoo! The rest of us are very jealous’ sets the tone. And very quickly, without even realizing it, you are pulled into Dave’s travel journaling mind set so that by the end of the book, you have all the tools and understanding needed to create a great travel journal.

So how do you become a journaling super-hero (Dave’s words, not mine)?

Well, according to Dave the first step is to learn the technique of speed journaling, as in ’don’t think. Just write’. Of course, given that we all have inner censors that want us to edit and think, the ‘don’t think. just write’ concept is always much easier said that done. But Dave has that covered with a whole chapter on ‘eluding your inner censor’ – in a nutshell, he suggests you send it on a separate holiday.

That done, Dave highlights the importance of using all five of your senses – touch, smell, sound, sight, and taste – to capture your journey. Mostly, only one or two of our senses are dominant at a time and they are the ones that we end up writing about. But taking a moment or two to focus on the other senses will provide a more rounded, in depth experience. 

And for those having trouble with the traditional chronological travel journal, Dave suggests jumping outside the box and using alternative techniques such as verbal  verbal snapshots -  live action reporting of a single moment in your travels, using all your senses to create a ‘photograph of words’

These are only a few of the many useful techniques that award winning travel humorist Dave Fox outlines in Globejotting.  And when I wasn’t laughing out loud at Dave’s own travel journal entries, I was busy scribbling down ideas on how to maintain momentum with my next travel journal. 

Who knew writing a travel journal could be so much fun?

(stop by on Wednesday for Part Two of ‘Writing Great Travel Journals’ which will feature a review of Writing Away by Lavina Spalding)