Disclaimer: This is just me writing essentially a journal entry on my recent trip to Japan and Hong Kong. with my sister, mother and father. Nothing more, nothing less. This is basically backup storage for my memory, so that I will (hopefully) always have a record of my trip there, and all of its events.
The next day, we woke up early. This was the only day where I woke up feeling good. After this, I woke up tired, due to getting very little sleep (every day was sleeping at midnight, waking up at 6am). Anyways, we were changing up our original plans of going to Nara and Universal Osaka on our first day. The new plan was to go to Hiroshima/Itsukushima first, since Universal might be too crowded on a Sunday. So we took the trains to Itsukushima Ferry. At the Hiroshima Train Station, I joked about the radiation giving me superpowers. At the station we bought our first drink from the vending machine, of which there seems like there’s one on every city block in Japan. I think we bought some green tea and some “green” lemonade. My dad would go on to buy a bunch of drinks from the vending machines during our trip. As soon as we left the station, we could smell the ocean (and the fish). I think we bought onigiri to eat on the train. We boarded the ferry to Miyajima Island, we stood on the upper deck, though eventually we moved to the lower level. We saw the “Floating Gate” but it was pretty far away. When we got on the island, we almost immediately ran into deer. We didn’t even need to go to Nara! I avoided touching the deer. Cari got her shirt dirty because a deer nuzzled its nose into her shirt. While avoiding deer poop in tiny pellets on the street, we got some grilled oysters. They were alright… At the temple, we saw them giving out omikuji, and all the fortune stuff. This turned out to appear at all temples we went to. The line for them to write your fortune, the sticks, the tying of fortunes, the talisman stores, etc. I took a picture with the nine-tailed fox statue. Unfortunately, we were too late for high tide, so the “Floating Gate” wasn’t floating. However, due to this, the water receded to where you could walk to within 100 feet of the floating gate, and there is this cool tidepool-like area where you can see hermit crabs, other crabs, and other creatures in the sand. We left and ate lunch at an udon restaurant. I got a curry rice dish. Cari really liked her udon there. There was a lot of momoji (syrup) pastries for sale, as well as the grilled oysters. Then we left for Hiroshima. We had to take a special local train to get to the Peace Memorial Park. This was our first time having to pay for a train (and wouldn’t be the last). Peace Memorial was okay… There was the famous dome which is the remaining ruined building from the nuke. It’s a good memorabilia, but it’s not amazing. On the bridge to the park, we saw a Falun Gong speaker, and we hurried across embarrassedly. Really green trees around. The thing that interested me was the cranes. Across the bridge is a student memorial, where some students folded 1,000 cranes in memory of the Hiroshima bombing. Since we did this for grandma’s birthday, it resonated with me more. Then we went to an even bigger crane memorial, where students from around the world sent their folded cranes, in designs of peace and such. I was in awe of all these cranes, and I felt the emotions and prayers of the whole world for peace. Then we got to the “official” memorial, and it was whatever, not special to me. The museum was closed, so we were pretty much done. We then walked to the hypocenter (the position above the Earth where the bomb exploded, 600 meters high). Right around there, we saw a line at a bakery, and decided to buy whatever they were selling. It looked like a loaf of bread. We didn’t eat it until the next day. Then, we took the bus back to the station, and then took the train to Kobe. This was the part of the trip where I was responsible, so I was kind of stomach-fluttery because I didn’t want to take the family to somewhere lame or something, and we’d be stuck and have to figure out somewhere else to go, etc. Anyways, we got off at Shin-Kobe, and I had to figure out how to get to the Nunobiko Railway, a tram that takes you above the Kobe skyline to an herb garden area. We eventually found it. On the tram, we saw that the Kobe skyline wasn’t there yet because it wasn’t dark yet. In the garden, Cari and Mommy took a bunch of pictures there. It was a date place, with a place for perfume and such. Also a restaurant, but we didn’t eat there. There were people doing photoshoots in the garden, and a weird guy in a giant anime girl costume. As we were leaving, we saw a bird, which had nested near the ceiling of the foyer. That lit Daddy up. Anyways, we took the tram back down, and now we saw the Kobe city lights. I said that Kobe was considered nice because all the tall buildings are staggered all over the city, giving the view a lot of depth. There isn’t a spot where there are no tall buildings, and then a spot with only tall buildings – they’re all over the place. We were hungry by now at 8:00, so we were like, okay, let’s just take the train to the Chinatown exit, and eat whatever’s there. Daddy said he wanted Kobe beef. It took us a while to figure out where to take the bus, and we were all tired and hungry. Finally we popped out at the right station, and we were surrounded by restaurants advertising their Kobe beef. Every single store for blocks around had a big digital sign screaming about its Kobe beef. There were a lot of young people around, with our first run-in with young people standing in the middle of the street hawking their flyers to pedestrians. We eventually just picked one restaurant at random, and unfortunately it was probably our collective least favorite restaurant experience of the trip. We walked in, and immediately we were awash in smoke from the countertops where they were cooking, because the restaurant was not well-ventilated. Anyways, we sat down at a bar. Behind the bar was a stove/countertop where food was cooked, and behind that were the cooks, who were just young people. Maybe that left a negative impression on my parents, because they came away with a stream of complaints about the food. Anyways, we sat down, looked at the menu, and were immediately shocked by the prices. $62 for a wagyu (normal Japanese beef) steak, and then $80 for a piece of Kobe. As we went through our trip later on, we saw a bunch of places with nearly $30 all-you-can-eat Kobe beef! Exorbitant prices aside, we were all hungry and tired, so we stuck around. My sister, dad and I ordered each our own beef dishes, and my mom ordered just some shrimp, because she didn’t want to spend too much. This is of course fine if she’s fine with it, but it feels like she’s bringing down the atmosphere when everyone else is trying to enjoy themselves, and my mom is continually scrimping for change. Then the raw slices of meat were brought to the cooks in front of us. I remember my mom was hungry or whatever, and reached for the fried garlic in a bowl on the stovetop to eat. While this wasn’t the best thing for her to do, the waitresses were very rude and yelled at her to put them down. And she did, back into the bowl. After that they were fine that she touched it and put it back! It was bizarre, but again, it was all a haze and we were unfazed because we were all so ragged with everything else that day. So then added to the weariness was the perturbation that this restaurant was uncomfortable to be in. Anyways, we got salad, soup and rice. I don’t think I was really thinking about the taste. I was just waiting for the main dish, the Kobe beef. The beef was served with mushrooms and onions. The beef was good. It was simply seared on the outside of the meat, and the inside remained raw, which is not how I normally eat beef. As a result, it was difficult to compare the beef to beef I normally eat. I can say that the texture was good. It was tender and smooth. In comparison, Cari’s ordinary wagyu beef was chewy and gritty. At the end, we got some matcha ice cream. I pretty much ate it all, since my dad is not into tea ice cream. I liked it. When we got outside, it was sprinkling just a tiny bit. We made our way towards the train station, going with the flow of hordes of young people out on a Sunday night. I was continually impressed during our trip of the independence of the young people that I saw. I felt that, even though I was five years older than a lot of them, I was not nearly as self-assured as they were. Anyways, we traveled back by train to Tennoji, and this time, it was a lot easier to find our way to the hotel on foot.
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Disclaimer: This is just me writing essentially a journal entry on my recent trip to Japan and Hong Kong. with my sister, mother and father. Nothing more, nothing less. This is basically backup storage for my memory, so that I will (hopefully) always have a record of my trip there, and all of its events.
First Day: Uncle Charles drove us to the airport. Uncle Charles told us he was headed for Hong Kong later on in the year. We initially missed the United terminal, so we circled back to it. We said goodbye to Uncle Charles and we went inside. Mommy tried to change seats at the United desk, but they told us to try that at the gate. We got in line for security. At the security gate, we had to go through the annoyance (admittedly, per usual) of pulling every little thing out of our pockets. I was patted down by a TSA officer. Daddy’s bag was pulled aside, but it turned out to be a false alarm. When we went to the gate, Daddy scolded me for choosing seats that were dirty, and we moved to some cleaner seats across the way. No attendants were at the gate desk, though we knew we wanted to trade seats so that we could sit together. Cari, Daddy and I went upstairs to get some water, since we didn’t bring any empty bottles. We got some “Napa” water bottles, which were I think $3.00 a piece. We also took bathroom breaks. We went back downstairs. I started reading one of the two books I brought, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Just skimming through an already thin paperback, I was surprised that the last thirty pages were a “student aid” of sorts to understand the book (as it is a commonly assigned high school reading book), and that the actual book was only 73 pages long! I was glad, because I had to get through two books in 9-10 days, and the other one would be a doozy. I had the impression that the book was a war book, so reading the first few pages, with the whole sunset, and the morbid vibe of it, I thought there was going to be a night ambush or something. Anyways, it was soon time for an early lunch, because we weren’t sure when the meals would take place on the flight. Mommy had brought zhong. I ate an entire one, Mommy and Daddy shared one, and Cari only hate half of one. Finally, attendants appeared at the gate, and Mommy hurried over to wait to talk to them. We managed to get three of us sitting next to each other, one sitting apart. To fight off jet lag, my idea was to sleep on and off on the flight, in order to confuse my brain as to when to sleep. This plan eventually backfired, as I ended up not being able to sleep when we finally arrived at our room in Osaka. Anyways, there were movies and TV shows available on the flight. I had a jolly time flipping through all the shows available for viewing. I eventually decided to watch “The Wolf of Wall Street.” It was a really entertaining movie, based on the true story of the rise of a stockbroker from lay-off to drugged-out penny-stock titan trying to hide his money from authorities. Probably one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s more theatrical performances. The editing was really fun (I’m not a hugely knowledgeable guy on Martin Scorcese’s films, so apologies for being ignorant). They served lunch. I think I originally ordered noodles, but then swapped with Cari’s chicken rice since of course she prefers noodles. It was a bit spicy (which was good for me), but Cari couldn’t finish if I recall. I walked around the plane to stretch a bit about three hours into the flight. I did try sleeping on and off, but it was sometimes difficult, and I felt the creeping feeling that it was a bad idea. I read more of Heart of Darkness when I was awake. I think by this time I realized that the book was about imperialism, not war. When I got bored of the book towards the end of the flight, I tried watching a cheesy Chinese fantasy film about ancient heroes and a weird Pokemon-like monster. I was hoping it’d be funny, but it turned out to be too self-aware about its dumbness in a lame way, and not enough cool action (a la “House of Flying Daggers”), so I eventually shut it off. Anyways, we landed in Tokyo, and I remember saying “Nihon ni tsuita!” in reference to Kero Kero Bonito. I remember Cari had to go to restroom immediately after we got off the plane. I think we picked up the Pupuru Pocket Wi-Fi and the JR passes at the airport, before heading out on the train. I was pretty excited to get on the train, because it was one of the things about the trip that I was most anticipating (perhaps partly because we’d be riding it so often.) The train from Narita Airport to Tokyo Station was probably the nicest one, because we reserved seats, and so got to ride in the nicer car. I remember the first thing I saw out the window was a rice paddy surrounded by hillsides and an urban setting. It was the most bizarrely out-of-place thing I had seen for some time. As we went along, there were quite a few rice paddies, some with the road through them like in “Totoro,” which Cari commented on. Eventually, the city started coming into view, so we knew we were getting to the metropolis and the end of our train ride. At the station, it took us a while to find the ramen place that Cari wanted to eat at, and when we finally got there, there was a super long line, so we ate at the place next door instead. There we learned about the ordering process. At the machine, you put your money in to order, and the machine spits out a ticket, which you then give to the waitress to take to the cooks when you get the front of the line. It’s overall more efficient. It gives you something to do while you wait in line, and then gets you your food more quickly when you get to your table. Also prevents eat-and-runs since the customer pays first. Anyways, I got the dan-dan men, which was curry-like, and wasn’t enough food for me. Anyways, we had to make a run for the train after this, since we had special reserved tickets for the 19:39 train or whatever. We luckily got to the right train. Once we were on the train, it had gotten dark outside, so you couldn’t see anything. But the train interior itself was brightly lit. As a result, though I was tired enough to take a nap, it was impossible for me to drift off, with the lights blinding me. So I was too tired to read or watch videos on my phone, but couldn’t sleep. It was pretty torturous. I also felt the growing sensation that I needed to do a #2. Anyways, when we got off at the Shin-Osaka station around 10-11-ish, we had to transfer twice because Mommy didn’t want to buy an IC pass. We had to take a train to Osaka Station, and then transfer again to the Osaka Loop to get to our room’s station of Tennoji. Luckily for us and all our luggage, the trains weren’t too crowded. I don’t remember too much, but we made it to Tennoji Station. We were very lucky for our entire trip to never miss our stop. Anyways, Mommy said she knew the way from the North Exit, so we followed her, but she lost her way at some point. At this point, I couldn’t even walk, I needed to poop so badly. Also an inadequate water intake caused the poop to feel really hard inside, making it perhaps even more painful than otherwise. I limped along, and when we were trying to find our ways, we used Daddy’s GPS to finally find the place. Of course the whole time Mommy keeps protesting, saying, “I don’t think it’s that way… I don’t understand, we should be on the right track…” Anyways, following Daddy we get to the place. After having read the reviews, I already knew about the five flights of stairs and the weird moldy smell in the room. But Daddy hadn’t read them, so he was complaining all the way up to the room, where of course he was most sensitive to the smells. I was shocked to see so much mold on the walls, though, to the point where I had to move my pillow to the other side of the bed, because I didn’t want to sleep with my head inches away from mold splotches growing on the wall. Internally I was shaking my head at Mommy for choosing this place for us to stay. The toilet had the bidet settings, but also luckily toilet paper. Unfortunately (or in my opinion naturally), I did not use any bidet settings for the entire trip. There was the complimentary pocket wi-fi, which turned out to be totally useless during our trip because it only lasted for five or six hours without being plugged in. There were also a washing machine (but no dryer), a microwave, a kitchen sink and drying rack, a rice cooker (!), an instant water boiler, an air conditioning unit, and a TV. The bathroom was quite interesting – there is a bathtub, and only a handheld shower head. So you couldn’t take a shower hands-free, and even if you could, you wouldn’t because standing up to shower meant the whole room would get wet. Luckily, the roomkeepers provided towels, soap and shampoo. You could pour a small tub of water over yourself like Japanese people do, which I did a couple times. The problem was that you couldn’t get clean by just pouring something over your head, so it seemed kind of useless to me. Anyways, I did my #2, took a shower, got my bag ready for the walking days ahead, and went to sleep. |
AuthorI was born and raised in San Francisco, California. I am proud of my Chinese heritage, and I think my background gives me a unique edge on this vast field of opinion. As a self-proclaimed music historian, I have loved pop music ever since I first heard it. These are my opinions on some of the recent albums and songs that are making a splash in the industry. Archives
December 2020
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