Japan - A month later...

I'm finally getting around to posting some of the pictures from Japan. There weren't as many this time, as I spent the first few days recovering from the Aikido seminar in Hong Kong. :)

Delicious hot pot!  One of the many ways I recovered.

One of the outings we did while I was in Japan was to travel to Nara.  Nara was one of the cities I was thinking about visiting the first time I was in Japan, but I ran out of time.  Nara is primarily famous for two things: landmarks (like temples and shrines) and deer.  Lots of deer.  You can see the deer influence in the city mascot.

Just after arriving at Nara station, I was greeted by Sento-kun.
After we made it past the city near the station, Emily and I were soon surrounded by deer after our purchase of deer biscuits (to feed the deer).  Unfortunately the deer flash mob happened so quickly, we didn't get a picture!

On the way to the Kasuga Grand Shrine.  You can see some of the stone lanterns in the picture.  Imagine stone lanterns of varying shapes and sizes lining the path for maybe a quarter mile on the way to...

Kasuga-taisha.  This is a Shinto shrine.  After spending some time here, we headed onto a Buddhist temple.

Emily and I together at Todai-ji.

We did a fair amount of souvenir shopping in Nara as well.  It was a fun trip!  Most of the rest of the time I spent in Japan was for eating.  I went back to the Ramen place I went the first time.  Oh it was so delicious!  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

I'll be sure to be more mindful of my own camera (and the charger) so I can take more photos next time.  Stay tuned for my trip to China in January!

A Whirlwind Tour

Ok, so I was wrong about having more posts to come. Sorry about that. Things got so busy with the aikido seminar and traveling the blog fell by the wayside. No matter! Be prepared for a whirlwind tour of Hong Kong! (Japan will be another retrospective post.)

We went to a nice park on the upper east side of Kowloon called Nan Lian Garden. It is next to the Chi Lin Nunnery.

It is a relatively new park, opened to the public in 2006, but built in the classical Tang style.

You can see the many skyscrapers in the background which nearly surround this very tranquil park.

Next, we headed off to a different temple.

Later, we made our way to the park that sits upon what once was the Kowloon Walled City.  A lawless patch of Hong Kong known for prostitution, gambling, and illegal dentistry.  Today, it is a very nice park.

A model showing the walled city before it was demolished.  Notice how tightly packed the buildings were.  This was all built without any assistance from the city.

A picture showing a cutaway view of the city.  After all the tenants were evicted, the city conducted an extensive survey to enable reconstructions such as this.

Later, toward the end of the day, we headed over to the Peak tram to head up.

Tram arriving (although we boarded the next one).

A nice view of Hong Kong from the Peak.  :)

Welcome to Hong Kong!

Welcome to Hong Kong! Sorry for the intermittent updates, but the Internet at the hotel was on the fritz yesterday.

Nathan Road is the main drag on Kowloon (the peninsula north of Hong Kong Island). It runs north and south.

View from my hotel room on the 17th floor, which is nowhere near the highest floor. For someone from DC, though, the 17th floor is pretty high!

Yesterday morning, I decided to walk down Nathan Road to the waterfront. At first it is packed with shops and restaurants on the sides of the street, but then it opens up a bit and has large trees.

This is the view of Hong Kong Island from Tsim Sha Tsui.

Next to the waterfront is the Avenue of Stars which pays tribute to Hong Kong's movie history. At the time (early morning) there weren't a lot of people crowded around Bruce Lee's star. However...

There were tons of people all around his statue (which isn't near his star).

A map of TST (as it is called).

I decided to walk to the Hong Kong History Museum, which also just happened to have free admission on Wednesdays. Here is a view on the pedestrian walkway.

I had to wait a bit for the museum to open. Here was a very interesting building that was nearby. I believe the TST Public Library is at the base.

Also while walking around and waiting, I walked by the Mosque on Nathan Road.

The History museum was really good! It started with Hong Kong's history 400,000,000 years ago (with a display and rather good movie) on the rock formations, and moved all the way up to present day. It had a lot of displays on the native people and their ceremonies. My favorite was the bun mountain festival, which shows two recreated bun towers about 3 stories tall (actual size). On the last day of the festival, people climb up and try to get lucky steamed buns.

The museum talked about how in the late 50s and early 1960s, Hong Kong started promoting tourism and how it remains a major source of income to this day.

The military garrison building over on Hong Kong island.

The legislature building on Hong Kong island.

The Cenotaph in Hong Kong, commemorating the dead from WW1 and WW2.

The HSBC lions (one behind me). These are printed on all the currency that HSBC prints for Hong Kong. Two other banks and the government print currency as well.

A nighttime shot of the historic Marine police barracks back in TST.

This was all my sightseeing before rushing off to the airport to pick up Emily. I made it just in time!

More posts to come!

Morning Calm

Welcome to another travel adventure! I flew into Dallas yesterday to participate in my good friend Brian's wedding. About 15 minutes after making it to the hotel, we jumped right into rehearsals and dinner organization. This morning, I had some time to walk around McKinney, Texas and enjoy a slowly drunk cappuccino. The whirlwind begins (for the guys) early this afternoon. Until then...

Back Again

I'll be the first to admit this final post is a bit belated, I returned from Japan on Sunday, but I needed to go ahead and finish out the blog for this trip.

Tokyo was a lot of fun, although Emily and I kept encountering closures.  First the Tsujiki Fish Market (which I mentioned was largely our fault for not reading it is closed on Wednesdays) but then the NHK Studio Store was closed too!  No vast amounts of domo-kun merchandise this trip!

But we still had a lot of excellent food as a consolation.  After spending the day walking all over Tokyo, we had some all-you-can-eat sukiyaki.  Traditionally, after the meat or veg is cooked in the pot, you dip them into a bowl with a beaten egg and some seasoning.  Well, I figured when in Tokyo...  No illnesses reported so just deliciousness all around!

This final picture is on my return trip to the Hombu dojo to buy a few gifts.  I didn't practice this day since we were leaving Tokyo in a few hours.  I'll definitely be going back though!

Well that's it for the Japan travel blog!  Until next time!

Tokyo

Greetings from Tokyo!  Emily and I left a few days ago from Kobe and took the Shinkansen.  The trip only took 3 hours and was very nice.  I can't believe how smooth the ride was!  You also get a ton more legroom on the train than on an airplane.  I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to travel by high speed rail.  Except, of course, that it is pretty expensive!  (We'll be taking the bus back.)

After an extremely confusing ride around the Tokyo Metro system, we finally made it to our stop.  Not as close as we possibly could be to the Hombu dojo, but not too far away either.  Just a simple 30 minute walk away!

We decided to do some sightseeing and started off with going to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building.  You can take a free ride up to the top floor for a good view of Tokyo.

 The view. . .

 The next day, we headed out to the Tsukiji market . . . unfortunately without fully reading my guidebook to find out it is closed on Wednesdays.  Oops.  At least there were still good photo opportunities.

We then headed over to Asakusa and the famous Sensoji temple.

 Another fountain . . . (this isn't the main focus of the temple fyi).

This brings us to today!  Today I went to the Aikido Hombu dojo to practice.  It was a lot of fun, although very warm!  Unfortunately Doshu is out, but Waka-sensei taught the class instead.  I'll be going back tomorrow for one more Aikido practice and then we'll be heading back to Kobe!

Out for a Walk

Kobe has a lot of fun things to do, one of which is going up to see the Nunobiki Herb Garden.  So the other day, Emily and I headed out for a day of walking.  It is up in the mountains so to get there, you take a cable car.  Here we are ascending up the mountain.

The view from the top is pretty nice.  It was also much cooler up here.  You can see all of Kobe and part of Osaka.

The garden itself was very nice.  It is mainly a long pedestrian road that winds down the mountain with plants and flowers lining the way.

About halfway down the mountain, it changes to a mountain path which leads you to a waterfall.  This was more of a hike.

You can see what most of the path looked like...

After a long day of hiking, the perfect way to end the day was having a yakitori fest.  I'll eat almost anything that's on a stick, and this place did not disappoint!  We had one of every type.  Yum!