Happy Lunar New Year

Happy belated Lunar New Year everyone. I know that it was last week, but I thought I could add it in. I had last week off of work with the Lunar New Year Holiday and I was able to get some good relaxation in with family and friends. I'm back to work now and will try to keep this thing updated a lot more often. Yes I missed blogging about the Superbowl and about the Ravens and their run. I did open a facebook account so that has been taking up some of my time, but I will try to keep up with regular entries about what is going on over here.

Wait my kids are???

Many of you know that Jacob was born here in China, so when he goes to the US, it is typically just for a visit, so he really does see the US as being a place to go for a vacation. While Maddie was born in the US, she also really only associates the USA with being a place that we go visit and China being our home. But both took this attitude to the next level while we were back in the US. When someone asked them if they were American or Chinese, Maddie first replied by saying, "I am Chinese!" Jacob then followed by proclaiming the same thing.

First, they are some of the whitest Chinese kids I have ever seen. Second, I think these statements make it so that it will be quite a job convincing the kids that the USA is our home when we get back. Oh well, it should be interesting.

Back and, well, maybe not better then ever

So I was really late in posting my stories from Tokyo and haven't really been posting as of late, so let me catch you all up on a couple of things:

• I am very excited for the Ravens making the AFC Championship game…they came a long way from this post
• My family and I were in the US for Christmas and really enjoyed our time with friends and family
• I finally found out that I passed a professional exam that I had been trying to take over the past couple of years, so that is definitely good news
• We got back to China and are in our final months so are starting to make plans for our return back to the US for good

All in Perspective

As a result of all the flying that I have been doing as of late (I guess you can just look through some of my posts as of late and that should give you an idea), I was able to accumulate a bunch of miles. This has enabled me to do trips here and there (like the Tokyo trip) and has also given me some other benefits that include getting passes to stay in the classy airline lounges (for United they are referred to as Red Carpet Clubs). Not being much of a flyer before these adventures, this is the first time that I have had the opportunity to be in a lounge at the airport. I got the airport early before leaving, so I decided to use one of my passes and spend my time in the lounge. I really didn't know what to expect when I went in, but I thought the lounge was nice. It was really big (could probably seat around 1,500 people) and had lots of different amenities like free internet, free food and drinks, and some other things that cater to a traveller. I was actually pretty impressed by the place.

I guess it was all put in perspective when another traveller sat behind me with a friend and he immediately started to complain about how bad the lounge was. In fact all he did was complain about how bad the lounge was for his whole time there. I guess this guy doesn't often sit out with the regular people waiting for the planes because if he did he would see that he has it pretty good in these lounges. Granted he was comparing it to the Singapore Airline lounges (which anything related to Singapore Airlines is going to be 10 times better then anything related to United) so he might be justified, but if compares it to not being in the lounge, I can't imagine someone who would complain. I guess it is all about a person's perspective on things.

Tokyo Day 4

My last day in Tokyo started early with me heading over to the Tsukiji fish market. The market itself was nothing special (but I should say that regular folks aren't actually aloud into the cool auction part of the market anymore). My main goal for going to this place was to get a nice fresh sushi meal…in the morning. So after walking around for a bit, I found a pretty unsuspecting place that seemed to be pretty popular. I found a seat, got a menu and started at it. For those of you who might only be familiar with sushi in the USA, when I say sushi I am referring to Nigiri Sushi which basically consists of raw fish on top of rice (in the US, Maki Rolls which are rolled together with fish and other ingredients like veggies and other stuff, are much more popular then Nigiri sushi). The first thing that I noticed (and loved) was that the rice was still warm when I took my first bite, usually the rice has cooled completely, but this really added to the intricacy of the sushi by having the cold raw fish combined with the warm and flavourful rice. To be honest I wasn't completely blown away by how good the sushi was, but it is still some of the best I have ever had. Actually there was two pieces that I had that they used a small blow torch to quickly broil the tuna (like 5 seconds) before serving it…this was absolutely one of the best tasting fish related dishes I have ever had…I think I could go to Tokyo and sit down and have this every single meal it was that good.

After getting my fill for breakfast, I headed to the Asakusa areas to see the Sensoji temple. Nothing too special here, but it is a neat thing to see. I then headed over to the Shibuya area which is well known for attracting an interesting crowd of young'ens on the weekends. I walked up through Shibuya and through Yoyogi Park so that I could go see the Meiji Shrine. The best part of the Shrine was the fact that there were some wedding ceremonies going on, so it was neat to see how the traditional wedding ceremonies went. After I back to Yoyogi park where the young folk had started gathering. There were people dancing (some to music, others…well I don't know what they were dancing to), acting out plays, playing instruments, people tapping broomsticks on the ground trying to make some kind of beat and then just a bunch of youths just sitting around hanging out. The one thing I really liked about this walk was you were able to get to see the diversity of the styles that people (of all ages) choose in Tokyo.

After soaking in all the fun of people watching, I headed back to my hotel to pick up my bags and head to the airport. I made one final stop in Ueno at an outside market that had caught my eye before getting on the train to the airport. I was very glad I took a walk through this thing, again, I am not a shopper so I didn't buy anything of worth, but I did find a Turkish Doner Kebab place. So I thought, after eating all this Japanese food…why not have a Doner Kebab. Technically I have only had one once in my life, but I could literally live off this stuff (which is good that I don't live in Europe because supposedly they are all over the place). I ordered one with chicken and I hate to say it, but it was by far the best thing I ate during my time in Tokyo. The Japanese food was good (the best I have ever had), but this Kebab has all the necessities that I love in food, it's got juicy meat, vegetables, great sauce (it was awesome), and the bread that was wrapped around it was perfect. So I was extremely glad to have taking this walk and will go to the place 100 out of 100 times if I ever go back to Tokyo. All in all a great ending to a great trip.

Tokyo Day 3

The more travelling that I do, the more that I learn that I am not a huge fan of tours. For this day I chose to do a tour to primarily see Mount Fuji. There were other things that was planned on the agenda, but the number one thing on my mind was to see and experience Mount Fuji. The only reason I chose the tour is that it made it much easier to get to and from Fuji rather then planning something on my own like my Nikko trip. I got to the bus station early so I walked a couple blocks and was able to get some good pictures of the Tokyo Tower in the daytime right behind the Zojoji Temple.

The itinerary for the day was to go to Mount Fuji, go to the 5th station on Mount Fuji (because of the snow you can only really go halfway up in the winter time), go take a lake cruise in Hakone, then go to one of the mountain tops in Hakone to see Mount Fuji from a distance. The tour ends with people taking one of the Shinkansen trains (bullet trains) back to Tokyo.

We left Tokyo and the weather was fine, but as we approached Mt. Fuji the weather got more cloudy and overcast and got worse to the point that it started to rain. This basically sums up my day. While I stood on Mount Fuji, I couldn't really see anything, and we were not able to go up too far on the mountain because it had started to snow. We did an early lunch, but when we got to Hakone, we were not able to go up onto the mountain top because it was too windy. We did take the lake cruise that was cool, but it was pretty overcast and windy. With all the other stuff that we were not able to do I was expecting that something would be wrong with the trains, but when we arrived, everything was on schedule, so we hoped on the bullet train and was back in Tokyo in around 40 minutes.

There was another guy on the tour on his own and we got to talking during the day and got to know each other. When we got back to the Tokyo Station, we walked over to the fancy Ginza area. This was really great place, but not being a shopper, we just kind of walked around. For dinner I got another noodle bowl, this time it was udon noodles (the first time it was ramen), the noodles were much better then the other place that I went, but the broth was much better at the first place. The main reason I got the soup was that it was featured as a Christmas special and it came with "seasonal" tempura that included shrimp (not as good as the first place), oysters (which were awesome) and something that I have never had before, Chrysanthemum. Actually when I started peaking into to different places, I noticed there were a bunch of places serving this, I guess it is popular in winter or over Christmas for some reason in Tokyo. Anyway, it was surprisingly really good, overall the meal was right on par with the meal the night before.

Tokyo Day 2

I got up early as I had planned a day trip to Nikko about a 2 hour train ride north of Tokyo. I bought a pass the previous day so that I could take the train and see all the sites without having to worry about paying for anything while I was there. The train ride was a neat ride through the northern countryside of Japan. It was right at the tail end of Japan's fall, but the leaves on the trees were absolutely stunning in the context of the countryside.

We arrived at Nikko which is a little town up in the mountains. It was a Thursday so the place was pretty quiet with not much going on. I walked up the hill to get to what I came to see, the temples and shrines in Nikko. The temples and shrines are located in a woodsy area that really was a change of pace from all the temples I see in China set in the middle of big cities. The area was really cool and it was a great visit.

When I got back into town there was still about an hour of light left in the day, so I rushed over to Ueno Park to get some pictures before the sun set. This is a large park set in the northern part of the center city area that has its own shrine and a bunch of museums. I wasn't much interested in the museums as I was in walking around. I am sure that about a week before I was there the park was absolutely stunning with all the leaves in reds and golds, but I was still able to get a couple of good pictures of the park.

After going through Ueno, I headed back to the Asakusa area, walked around there for a little bit and headed down an alley to see if I could find dinner. I found this little place that served bowls of noodles in soup and headed in. Wow, for such a little place they had amazing soup and it came with the best shrimp tempura that I have ever had. I nice huge shrimp with a great tasting tempura batter around it, all in all the best meal that I had in Tokyo…thus far.