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.

Tokyo Day 1

I have been through Japan before, but this trip was going to be my first time that I would be staying in Japan for more then 1 night so I was really excited to get to see different parts of Japan.

I started off with taking the Kesei Skyliner (a train) from the airport to Ueno (Ueno being close to where I was going to be staying). It was later in the afternoon by the time I got settled into my hotel in the Asakusa area. I had more then enough time to start my adventuring so I headed out into town. I walked around the Asakusa area which is most well known nowadays for the Sensoji temple that is located in the heart of Asakusa. I got to see the are around the temple as it was too late to actually go in. I got on the subway and headed to Roppongi which has two very huge new shopping areas along with a nice view of the Tokyo Tower at night. I just walked down a couple of streets in that area making sure I got a nice view of the Tokyo Tower from the street level at night. I then headed over to the Akihabara area of town which is well know for its electronics. They say you can find anything you want there, with that in mind I headed there because I forget to bring my adapter for my computer plug so I needed an adapter to plug my computer in to the outlets in Japan. After I found what I was looking for I headed back to Asakusa, before turning in a found a sushi place with a good atmosphere and enjoyed eating and people watching (the food was just okay, nothing too special).

I am not Rocky!!!

One of my friends asked if I would be singing the Rocky theme as I was climbing all those stairs up the mountain. While I spent most of the time being too tired to sing songs in my head, I did keep thinking about that comment. So when I got to where I thought I was at the top of the mountain, I looked at the platform on the peak where the cable car was dropping people off and they were all looking out from the platform at the few people climbing the mountains and taking pictures of the views. I then looked at the last set of stairs and thought, this is my Rocky moment. So the theme song started playing in my head, I took a few deep breaths and decided to sprint up the last set of stairs. There were probably about 70-80 stairs, so not the easiest sprint, but I knew I could do it. I reached the top of the staircase and was getting ready to raise my arms when I noticed there were still 2 other sets of stairs leading up to the final platform each of which were about 70-80 steps long. So I stood on the short flat area that I sprinted up to with people above me all looking at me as if I was crazy for sprinting up a set of stairs that don't lead anywhere. I was out of breath feeling like I could hardly move and I still had to shamelessly walk up the real final set of stairs. When I got to the top, tour groups and other people were still staring at me as if I was an idiot for sprinting up to no where and well I was an idiot, so they were justified in giving me the crazy stares. Oh well, I made it to the top, maybe it wasn't in the best fashion, but I can still say that I climbed up to the top of it.

Huangshan Part2

After about 7 hours in total of going up and down stairs, climbing up the mountain and exploring the peaks, my legs were yelling for mercy so I headed to my hotel at the peak of the mountain to sleep. The hotel had a nice room, but it was absolutely freezing in the room. The top of the mountain was about-10 degrees Celsius which is about 14F and my room felt like it was somewhere between 30 and 40 degrees, so needless to say it was cold. I took both thick blankets from the two beds in the room to cover me up and slept in as many clothes as I could. After being under the covers my body heat was helping to warm up the bed so I finally got comfortable enough to go to sleep.

The next morning I headed out for my journey down the mountain. I knew it wasn't going to be easy when I walked down 2 steps in the front of my hotel and my legs were in pain. 2 steps down about a couple thousand more to go. I went back up to explore the peaks some more and then began to head down the West Side steps of the Mountain. The west side was neat (the part of it I saw) and after passing the cable car, I went back to the cable car to take it down the west side as I didn't think I could make it down the whole west side of steps in one piece. I don't think I have many fears, but I think cable cars going down the sides of mountains may be one of my fears. It was a little scary when you leave the cable car station and it feels like there is nothing around you except the cable holding you up. I am totally fine with ski lifts, but for some reason with the wind rocking my car around and there just being a feeling like if something goes wrong, I'm a goner. So it wasn't the most pleasant cable car ride, but I was happy when we arrived at the station at the bottom of the mountain.

I was supposed to have a driver waiting for me at the bottom that was going to be taking me around to the small towns around the mountain area, but the guy never showed up and didn't answer his phone when I tried to call him. I wasn't mad because the mountain was really all I needed to see on the trip and it really could be all that I needed to see for a whole year of trips. So I just retraced my steps to get back to Tunxi in order to catch my flight. Needless to say, my legs were hurting, I was exhausted, but it was a GREAT GREAT trip.

Huangshan Part1

While I was looking forward to both the Bahamas and Xian, I was really looking forward to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). I can sum up Huangshan in one word…WOW. It was all that I thought it would be and one of the best trips I have ever done in my life. The mountain does not disappoint.

I knew that there was not going to be much touristy stuff to do in Huangshan, it was all about climbing up the mountain. Before getting too deep, when I say climbing, I didn't have any climbing gear, it is not climbing like rock climbing; you see China knew it was an important mountain so they built stares out of the rock of the mountain going all the way up to the top. While this may sound like it isn't really mountain climbing, I can say that going up stairs for 4 hours is not the easiest thing to do.

I began my day with having a guy take me on the back of his bike to the bus/train station in the town of Tunxi (the town that I flew into). I then hopped on a very local mini bus after they said they were going to Huangshan. I was a little hesitant, but the tour books noted that small buses left the town routinely to go to Huangshan, so I was confident that it would take me to the mountain. The area in between Tunxi and the mountain was full of farms and it was a cool little trip. Along the way, we would stop when people would wave us down and they would hop onto the bus to go to the mountain, most of the people were hopping on with stuff to sell at the mountain as they were not going to climb the mountain. The bus took me into the small town at the base of the mountain and after a little explaining the mini bus eventually dropped me off at another bus station, this bus was going to take me up to the starting point of the mountain.

So there I was at the starting point and I had the choice of taking a cable car or walking up and, of course, I was there to climb it, so I started my journey up. From the bottom the mountain looked pretty cool and it was a great day no clouds in the sky. I was actually mistakenly taken to the wrong set of steps, there is an East Side and a West Side, I was taken to the East side steps. From what I understood it was shorter then the west side, so I was a little disappointed, but oh well as long I got to the top. In the end I was very happy to have gone up the East Side, while there were less "attractions" to see on the way up, the views were still absolutely amazing. There is a pretty funny story about my reaching the top of the mountain, if you want to see it, click here to jump to the blog post. After my journey to the top of the mountain, I then spent the next couple of hours exploring the peak of the mountain (note that the mountain actually has 72 peaks so you kind of just go around to different areas exploring). It was actually really good that I went up the shorter set of stairs because it gave me a lot more time to explore the peaks of the mountain and take great pictures from the top. I would actually recommend this for those people that only have a limited time (note there are also cable cars that take you to the top in a couple of minutes and then you can explore the peak much more easily, but that is not the funnest way to explore the mountain). Again, the views and the scenes from the top were stunning, the mountain itself is a really cool mountain but around every corner I just kept saying to myself…"This is awesome."

Xian

After spending exactly 2 days in Shanghai, I headed off to a city that would be unknown by people other then the fact that some farmer had discovered a large collection of terracotta statues. Xian is a pretty desolate town that appears to survive primarily from the tourist industry that goes to this city as a base to adventure out about 1 hour into the countryside to look at the grand display of Terracotta Soldiers. I ended up going on this adventure with a couple of my friends and we started the first morning out with driving to see the terracotta soldiers. For those of you who are not aware of these statues, when you do a 10 day tour of China, the typical tour includes stops in Beijing (for all the history that it offers), Shanghai (for it just being the modern hub of China), and then they typically hit Xian because of the famous terracotta warriors (you will note that I think in just these couple of sentences I have typed the word "terracotta" more times then I have ever done in my life). So my main reason was to see what the hype was about with the soldiers and I can truly say that it was worth the trip out. We started with the smallest display of soldiers and went to the largest, with the largest being truly amazing. I am not a huge museum person, I would much rather climb a mountain (oh yeah there will be a post about that adventure), but for a display, this was worth it. Just look a the pictures and you will get an idea of what it was all about.

We then went to see the Wild (sometimes called Big) Goose Pagoda and then headed over to the Ming Wall that surrounds Xian. Both were neat, but nothing that I would go out of my way to look at. You could climb up to the top of the wall and walk around on the top. We walked around ¼ of the wall and it took about 40-50 minutes to do this, so that should give you some perspective on how big the wall is around the city.

We ended our day with, in my opinion, the highlight of the trip and it wasn't even a place that we were planning on going. It just so happens that the hotel we were staying at was right next to the Old Muslim Street. So our driver dropped us off at the beginning of the street and we began to walk down it. This is the kind of thing that I like, you had food vendors all up and down (and in the middle of) the street cooking all kinds of different foods. People were hawking all kinds of little things here and there. I can find food streets in Shanghai and I can definitely find people hawking things in Shanghai, but the atmosphere of this street just felt different, mostly because of the heavy Muslim influence.

Raining on our parade

As promised, here are the pictures as I saw it.

Wedding Before the Rain:

I turned to my left and noticed that the rain was coming:

About 5 Minutes Later, everyone under the gazebo a little wet:

The Bahamas

So as I said in my last post, a part of my long almost 18,000 mile journey took me to the Bahamas. This was my first time to the Bahamas and I have to say that it was quite enjoyable. We stayed at the Sheraton Cable Beach about 15 minutes from the Nassau airport. I had read a bunch of complaints about the hotel, but I actually thought it was not too bad. The beach was nice and the facilities were not so bad. The whole point in my family and I going all the way from Shanghai to the Bahamas was to attend my younger sister's wedding. The wedding ceremony was set out on the beach and it was going great until right before the ceremony was wrapped up it started to rain (actually I decided to do a post of the 3 pictures that define the moments before and after the rain hit, so click here to see that post). We all started to joke that we had heard of the bride and/or groom running away because of cold feet, but had never heard of everyone at the wedding running away. The scene was great because it started to drizzle a little bit, but at one point I looked out and noticed that there was a whole bunch of rain coming our way. Once the rain really started to fall everyone got up out of their seats and made a mad dash for the gazebo where the wedding reception was going to take place, this was before the wedding ceremony had concluded with the, "I do's" and the "I now pronounce you husband and wife." I'm sure it was not the way that my sister envisioned it, but at least it will be a memorable story.

I didn't have much time in the Bahamas, but, besides all the swimming that we did, I did get to go out and do a short snorkelling trip. The snorkelling was just okay, but before going back to the beach the "captain" of the boat said that we could look for conch shells. So he tied a rope to the back of his boat and three of us grabbed onto the rope and he basically just towed us back of his boat as we looked at the bottom of the ocean for conch shells (the water was bout 12 feet deep so we were towed on the surface looking down). After about 10 minutes we started to find the shells and I gave mine to my younger sister and her new husband, so all in all, it was a good (but short) trip.

14 Airports in 6 Days

Thus is my life over the past week. There are many people that have not visited 14 airports in their lifetime let alone in less then 1 week. If you're wondering why I did this, my younger sister got married in the Bahamas over this past weekend, so with some intentional stopping along the way (we stopped and had an overnight in Narita, Japan, then had an overnight in Baltimore before heading to the Bahamas) I got to roam around in various different airports. Yes you can get from Shanghai to the Bahamas without visiting different airports 14 times (note that I am not saying I visited 14 different airports, there were some repeats), but if you want to do some stopping along the way, it becomes harder. So as I write this I am back in Shanghai and right back into the groove of things. I actually got a good night sleep last night (I was pretty exhausted from my days of travelling into different time zones). Here are some interesting things you might also want to know:

-My first time in Japan was only a brief taste, but Japan is a pretty amazing place based on what I have experienced. I have an upcoming trip to Japan so will get to experience more of it and will get back to you on whether it is truly as amazing as I first thought it to be.

-I flew a total of 17,973 miles in the 6 days that I was flying, yes it really is a little insane if you think about it.

-I am still consistently disappointed with Washington Dulles airport, next to JFK and Shijiazhuang, it is one of the worst airports that I have visited in the world.

-I was most surprised by the Detroit airport during my trip. It seemed new and clean (at least the terminal that I was in) and it offered a lot of those good ole amenities that you look for in an airport (clean bathrooms, good shopping and food selection, functional airport space). Detroit is one of the worst cities in the US, but its airport is one that I would be happy to fly into in the future.

-US domestic airline carriers are some of the worst in the world and it will just keep getting worse. I avoided having to pay any baggage fees on my trips, but will most likely have to in the future. No meal service on domestic flights, no beverage service on domestic flights (except for NWA that they did have free beverages), no real in flight entertainment (at least not the good seatback entertainment you have on Asian airlines). By the way airline executives, by making consumers pay for the little things you are putting a bandaid over a very large wound, you should really look into ways of changing your businesses around to actually begin to make money instead of doing these short term not working solutions.

-I will talk more about the Bahamas in a later post so I will keep you updated.

Tokyo and More

Maybe one excuse for not writing anything on this blog has to do with the fact that my wife and daughter were in Japan last week. They spent three days at Tokyo Disney Land and then the rest of their time in downtown Tokyo. They both had a great time (they went with a friend of ours and her daughter). Every time Maddie got on the phone she sounded like she was in heaven she was so excited. Renee was really impressed with Tokyo Disney (she has an idea as to what Disney should be after visiting Orlando and Anaheim Disney's). She was even more impressed with how amazing Tokyo was. She kept saying how clean it was and how things just work well in Tokyo (other then their really confusing subway).

While they were in Disney, Jacob and I got some good father-son time in. Actually he is a totally different kid without Maddie around, a lot more calm and peaceful and playing well on his own. Below you can see a select few pictures that were taken by Renee during their time there.

The Philippines Day 3 (Part 2)

Okay, so we left off at leaving the volcano. After the Volcano we started to head back for me to go to the airport, on the way we stopped at a fast food place called Mushroom Burger, which mixes its ground meat with home grown mushrooms. I wish I could say that it was awesome, because it is a pretty unique concept (yes I know there are thousands of places that put mushrooms on their burger, but not mixed in with the meat), but it was not very good. The taste of the patty was less then to be desired and the whole burger just didn't work out. We then moved onto a site of a sky castle (a castle on the top of a high mountain), which was a castle that was never finished, so it is actually just sky ruins. This was okay, but we did stop on the side of the road at a pineapple grove where we got the farmer to go into his grove and pull a pineapple for us. If you remember, I had the best mango on the first night in Manila, this was by far the best pineapple that I have ever had. Wow it was so fresh (the guy did just pick it) and sweet and juicy…awesome. All in all, the best day of the trip what a fun trip.

The Philippines Day 3 (Part 1)

Day 1 and Day 2 were really cool, but my third and final day was the best day of them all. Early in the morning, we left Manila to head south to the Taal Volcano. This is a volcano that is situated in the middle of a lake. Thus the first part of the adventure is finding someone to hire to take their boat to the middle of the lake to get to the volcano. My driver, Pippo, who was the only person that kept me from getting ripped off throughout the whole day, found someone who "looked" reliable and that guy jumped into our car to take us to where his boat was. After travelling almost straight downhill in the car to get to the lake, we found his boat and we were off. The boat was basically a canoe with long bamboo sticks on each side (see the picture) with a motor in the back. It was a pretty windy day so we went up and down in the boat over the choppy waters. Pippo had never been on a boat before and is scared of the water, so needless to say he was clinging on for dear life as the boat was going up and down over the waves (and yes, the Philippines are a group of islands, so yes, Pippo who lives on an island is scared of the water…I know…but I've heard of weirder things in my life).

When we arrived, I had the option of riding a small horse up the volcano or actually trekking it myself, I decided on the latter and started walking. It was about 95degrees F outside with 80% humidity, so needless to say it was a "fun" walk up the volcano. It took about 1 hour to get to the top with the last 100 feet being steps climbing up the remaining part of the volcano…steps at the end of climbing a volcano are not a good idea if you were wondering. Around the crater of the volcano are guys who sell different drinks and food and the second that I made it to the top there was a guy popped the top of a glass bottle of Mountain Dew. Now let me tell you, I am not the biggest fan of Mountain Dew, but after climbing up hill for an hour in 95degrees, I looked over at the bottle (with sweat in my eyes), saw cold mist escaping out of the open top and saw the beads of water careening down the sides, I don't think my mind was fully functioning yet, but I just walked over to the guy, threw some money (an amount I am still not sure of to this day) and proceeded to down the Mountain Dew. I know that is not the best way to hydrate yourself, but I can honestly say, it was the best drink I have ever had in my life. Whether it was the right thing to drink or not, it hit the spot (to the point that you can even look at the picture that I took of it below).

After downing the Mountain Dew, I finally turned around to look into the crater of the volcano. The crater has a lake inside of it with another little island on it called Vulcan Point. A stupid fact that I got from Wikipedia, but thought I could share with you all is that Vulcan point "is the world's largest island within a lake on an island within a lake on an island." Wow, I'm not even sure I understand that or who actually measured it to make sure that was indeed true.
Besides the Mountain Dew, the other highlight of making it to the top of the volcano was that you can pay to shoot bullets with pistols or a semi automatic weapon into the crater. While I was able to contain myself (after having the guy present the weapons to me), there were many a Taiwanese tourist that loved taking the gun and shooting it into the crater. By the way, if you didn't get it from above, this was absolutely amazing. Taking the boat to the volcano, climbing it, having an awesome Mountain Dew, all in all it was a great experience.