Talking about the past... part 3

The final leg of our 4 country, 12 day vacation as a one night stop in Tokyo to see friends Holly and Skip, with their kids Skylar and Blayden. We took an overnight flight from Malaysia and arrived at their place early on Saturday morning.

A quick shower to freshen up and we were off with Holly and the kids to wander the streets of Tokyo and see the little German Christmas market that was set up in one of the neighborhoods. That night we planned to show the two local expats what we knew of Tokyo, taking them first to the local sushi restaurant that Matt had found when were were here a few years ago for the Red Sox games, and then where we stopped in when passing through on our way to Hawaii. So off we went with our business card for the restaurant, and after some slight confusion we found the place, and of course it's closed. Holly talked to some locals and they told us that they are always closed on the weekends....

But that was okay, after accepting the let down and apologizing we found a tiny little restaurant around the corner where Skip had to work hard on his reading and speaking skills in order to get us food, but the food that we did eat was delicious.

After dinner we headed across town to take them to the jazz bar we went to last time we were here so that we could see Stan Gilbert again. So what happened here? Well as you can probably guess Stan doesn't play on the weekends so we missed him too. Overall our night of trying to upstage the locals with out knowledge was a bust, but we did leave them with two cards for these places so that hopefully Skip and Holly will get a chance to return and enjoy the night that we had tried to show them...

The next day we had to leave in the early afternoon for our flight home so we tagged along with our friends to the local Synagogue where they were having a Sunday buffet since we were there in the middle of Hanukkah, so we were able to enjoy a nice meal and once again learn how to play the dradle game.



From there we were off to the airport and then back on the plane heading for the states, it was a quick trip and we packed a lot into it but it was definitely worth it all just to be able to spend such quality time will all of our friends and family over on that side of the world...

Returning to Chicago.

After celebrating the New Year in Hanoi we were up bright and early on the first for a flight to Hong Kong. We had one night to spend in Hong Kong, so we slowly meandered around the city, stopping at little markets and the like, but with nothing planned or that we felt we needed to see. For dinner we wandered over to the Soho area and were actually a little surprised by how many bars and restaurants were over there - for some reason this isn't somewhere we had made it to on our other trips here... January second was another early flight, this time first to Tokyo and then finally to Chicago. We had a nice view of Mount Fuji as we flew into Japan, and once there Skip and Holly drove out to the airport to visit with us during our 5 hour layover.

Mount Fuji from our Hong Kong - Tokyo flight

Skylar, Holly, Blayden, and Skip

The cold of Chicago

And that's it, we've been back for two weeks now and we seem to be adjusting fine. We've got a few items left that we know we want to post about, but I can't promise that we will be quick about getting to them...

Back in Chicago....

Yep, it's early Saturday evening and we are trying to unpack and settle ourselves into what will be our temporary home for the next few months. We had a great time last week enjoying Vietnam and then we spent one night in Hong Kong before we hopped on the long flight back to Chicago. We had a quick layover in Tokyo and Skip and Holly brought their kids out to the airport to visit with us and to help us pass the time.

The struggles of dealing with picking up 8 checked items of luggage once landed, and finding a taxi that can hold all, seemed easily manageable - I'm guessing that's because here everyone speaks fairly fluent English. Now we are dealing with the fun of unpacking and organizing these belongings so that tomorrow we are fresh and ready to run all of the other errands that need to be completed when one returns.
So sometime next week, as we get the time, we will go back into our Vietnam trip and share our thoughts and photos...

More Tokyo

The next day we met up with an old friend and colleague from Rosenbluth, Holly. We worked together when I first moved to Chicago, and she has since, married, moved to London, then Germany, had two children and now lives in Tokyo with her family.

It was great to reconnect with her again and meeting her two kids, Unfortunately Skip, her husband was flying back to the U.S. so it was Mark and the girls for the day. We spent the day, catching up with each other’s lives. What a small world!

That evening as we promised our friend that we would come back to hear him play again at the Kei jazz club. As we walked in, he told us that the owner advised him that the club was closed on Monday due to the holiday. Since Stan told us to come back on Monday, he made her open the bar for us. Glad we decided to go back to the bar!

We were very lucky as the weather was excellent the entire time we were in Tokyo, and we were able to meet up with some old friends!

Remembering back two weeks ago.....

Just two short weeks ago we were waking up in Tokyo, with no major plans and perfect weather off we went to wander through the city.

First we need coffee, and in heading there we get to witness a window washer lose his balance and go swinging wildly away from the building. He spilled half his bucket of water all over the sidewalk below, getting a few people...
Once we were fueled up we just stared walking, we had seen a lot of Tokyo when we were here last year so it made for a nice lazy day of just walking and seeing what we would run into.

For lunch we stopped at a great German style beer hall that had beautiful mosaic work covering the walls.Finally, after walking what Tina believes to be somewhat over 10 km, we made it back up to the small restaurant that we went to last year so that we could see the owner that had sent us photos of the cherry blossoms.

But, as you remember we found out when looking into trips to Kyoto, it is the Golden Week and a lot of places are closed. This small little restaurant is closed too with a small sign saying that it will re-open just after we leave for Hawaii. There is someone inside so we knock on the door anyway...

The owner comes out and is glad to see us - we gave him a photo of all of us from last year, and he decides that he will take us to another good little sushi restaurant in the area that is still open.

The sushi master and his wife

The food was excellent, and this tiny place was packed. We pulled out our little travel printer and printed off a picture of Tina and I with the owner, and after some mangled Chinese between us, Tina writing Chinese, and finally a call to his English teacher - we agree to come back to Tokyo sometime when his restaurant is open so that he can treat us to a great sushi meal...

Back in Xiamen

Ah, what a trip it has been - Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hawaii. Well, we are finally back home in Xiamen and we made it back safely, although I'd a good deal sunburnt.

We took lots of pictures and have some great stories, some that we can even share - so starting tomorrow, if we can get our act together and get unpacked and cleaned up, we should be back to posting on a somewhat regular schedule.

What a difference a day makes.

Alright, now we're happily in Tokyo albeit not without some issues.

We arrived into Narita airport and I went to pull out some cash but couldn't quite remember the exchange rate; A couple of ATM attempts and I'm locked out, although I've managed to get out either 100 or 10 USD. A quick taxi ride later and I'm hoping I've only got 10USD, otherwise we paid just under $250 for a 1 hour car ride. Verification of the exchange rate once in the hotel lets us know we've just enjoyed the most expensive taxi ride of our lives.

A quick phone call to the bank and my card is unlocked so we can go and pull out enough cash for the rest of the weekend here. Then we go out to a nice sushi dinner and then to a jazz club that are both on the same block as our hotel.

This morning we stopped off at a bookstore and grabbed a couple of notepads like we can't find in China, and I just watched in amazement as the total went up. Things are expensive here in Tokyo.... we've managed to blow our entire Japan budget in just 24 hours. Luckily the hotel has internet, because we will be staying here the rest of the weekend.

Our Tokyo trip in pictures -

First night at Mei Jazz Bar

The rest will be spent in these two very tiny rooms.

...and we're off

Today is the May Day holiday here in China, and we are taking advantage of it and leaving the country. We are flying down to Maui on Monday so that we can do some drinking with our friends Mike and Heather before they get themselves hitched on Thursday (5.7.9).

Once we realized that we would be traveling just after a long holiday weekend, and that we were flying to Hawaii from Tokyo it was a simple choice to spend the long weekend in Japan. We would fly in and take the bullet train down to Kyoto spend two days enjoying it's beauty and then head back up for a night in Tokyo before heading off on our real holiday.

We came to this brilliant plan a little over a month ago and quick called up and airlines and changed our flight from Xiamen to Tokyo, and then got started on finding hotels in Kyoto to stay in that were close to all them amazing sights. This is where we ran into problems, most of the rooms seemed to be priced over $200 a night. Further researching by Tina found that in Japan this is their "Golden Week", and although Tokyo will be empty and inexpensive Kyoto will not be.

Weekend in Tokyo it is then, depending on the weather we may try taking a quick day trip out, and then after this relaxing weekend it's off to the hectic world that is a destination wedding.

Not sure if or when we will be posting again (I would read that as - expect nothing until maybe the 14th) but to be nice we have lined up a few more days of photos from the time that Barb and Nancy were visiting. So, you'll at least have that to get you through this weekend...

Who's says I'm bored...

on average most Americans spend up to 4 hours of television per night, and while that may be the case, I often wonder how many hours we waste/entertain ourselves with the computer.

Sure, there are nights we need to work, rather I'm talking about surfing the web, reading blogs, playing solitaire, reading the news, talking to friends, emails etc.

Usually, my morning is doing just that, reading emails, blogs, news, talking to friends back home via IM, uploading photos, and researching information. It makes sense given the time difference. That being said, the past week, I have been sitting at the computer for about 5 hours each day, researching two things, Japan and a new cell phone.

Japan,I figured I could research what sights we wanted to visit, and find a hotel close to the areas in Kyoto, or close to transportation. After choosing hotels that were moderately priced, and being told that they were sold out, I went online to figure out why. I understand Kyoto is very lovely and very busy, but this seemed rather odd that they only hotels were in the $300USD price range. Yup, Mark and I are travelling in one of the busiest times in Japan. While we thought we were smart leaving China to avoid the holidays, we discovered that we will arriving right at the start of the Golden Week. Well, at least it explains why we couldn't find a hotel. So, now we are on to plan B, booking a hotel in Tokyo (most of the Japanese leave Tokyo and Osaka during the holidays) and taking day trips.

As for cell phones, that's another story. My phone doesn't have the best sound quality, so we decided a new phone was in order. Here in China, since landlines are pretty much non-existent, most people have cell phones, and since China has a vast pool of potential buyers, competition is stiff. It's great that we have vast amount of phones that we can choose from, it's also overwhelming. Last time we purchased phones, we had just arrived in China and was taken to SM, one of the larger malls in Xiamen. The entire floor (which is a few city blocks long) is dedicated to selling phones. Aside from the hordes of people, the phones all started to look alike, so this time, I figured I will research ahead of time. I finally decided on the phone, the Nokia, N82, and hope it's as good as the reviews say as it's getting hard having a one sided conversation.

My plan is to walk in, pay for it, and leave with my new phone. The goal is to have this completed is less than 30 minutes but seeing as we're in China one never knows..I'm optimistic.

General feel good post....

Now, we know that that all of our regular readers will remember this first photo...

Yes, that's right that and the following photos are from when Matt came over to visit us and we traveled over to Tokyo to see the Red Sox opening series against the A's.

These pictures were taken at a small little sushi restaurant that Matt found near the stadium, the lower one was from the first night we were there and the first photo is actually from when we returned the following night before game two.

The owner was so nice to us the first night, coming over to talk and show off his photo album, that we printed out a copy of the photo from the first night and presented it to him when we returned. He enjoyed it and we ended up taking the second photo of him and his wife in front of their restaurant. We gave him our cards so that he could e-mail us and we could send off the photos from that second night...

Ok, so it's now a month later and today this is sitting in our mailbox.

This confused me - as nobody we know would be able to write out our address, but upon flipping it over we see that it was mailed from Tokyo.

Yes, it was from the owner of the restaurant, he had simply taken the address from one of the business cards that we had handed him. Enclosed was the following letter from him -

We hope you can read that, if not it basically is saying thanks for the picture and for stopping by. He then included three of his own photos of the cherry blossoms for us to enjoy.
Isn't that just the most amazing thing somebody could do?

Fresh Sushi

I just have one more item of our travels to Tokyo, and then that should be the last of our Tokyo stories. As Mark mentioned sushi was extremely fresh and delicious.

I couldn't resist. We had to show you just how fresh sushi is in Japan.

Japanese Shrines and Temples

Ah, now that we are back in Xiamen it's amazing how busy and behind you can get with only a few days away, but we are slowing catching up and hopefully we will be fully back to normal within another day or two....

But first we have to give a final recap on our quick tour through Tokyo, where between drinking at great little watering holes, stuffing ourselves with sushi, enjoying the opening series in baseball, and taking the bullet train to see Mount Fuji, we did manage to squeak in a few shrines and temples.


Those two photos are from Senso-Ji, a beautiful temple surrounded by tiny markets selling all sorts of trinkets and assorted junk. In the temple itself, for only 100 yen (about $1), we could shake a stick out of a large can and then open a drawer corresponding to a number on the stick to get a fortune... Tina and I both got bad fortunes but Matt managed to get a good fortune, lucky him.
The next set of photos are all from the Meiji-Jingu shrine, which is in the middle of Tokyo, and surrounded by a large park. It was a stunningly clear and warm day which made wandering through the parks and then the wide open plaza of the shrine really amazing. Maybe because we were there during the week, but it was fairly empty and incredibly peaceful, another side to the hustle, noise, and neon of the Tokyo that we spent the rest of our time touring.

Japan was a great trip, somewhat surprising to both of us but we aren't really sure what we were expecting. It's got some great Asian roots with the temples and shrines, but it really runs like a major city, very clean and precise. As Tina listed a few days ago, it really is the exact opposite of the world that we are currently living in, and as she also said, we've started to get used to the hectic mayhem that is China.

More on Japan...

While wandering through Tokyo we took the time to visit Mount Fuji, tour the cherry blossoms at the various parks and toured through several different districts all of which are unique in their own way. At night, the more populous areas are lit up with all sorts of neon signs trying to get you into whatever store, restaurant, or bar that may be located in each building.

It really was a little overwhelming, but a lot of this may have been because we couldn't read any of the signs. Every building would have at least five floors of different shops, the only ones we visited had picture menus or a listing of the drink specials in English.

On our second night in Tokyo, the first game was on night 3, we went over to the Shinjuku area, supposedly a popular dining and drinking nightspot. We had an incredible sushi dinner and then found a small little bar called Mother's in the basement of one of the buildings.
We walked down into this bar and there was only one other customer in there, actually it seemed like he knew the bartender. We figured we would stay for one drink, but when they gave us the menu the front was the beer and drink list and the second part was a list of every artist they had CDs for in the restaurant. We were able to pick a CD and then the song and the bartender acted like our own private DJ. Two song selections later and we were the only people left in the bar, the bartender loved us and also selected out some good Japanese metal, and other bands for us to listen to. We had a great time and ended up walking out of there after just over four hours.....
The next night we had baseball, we already told you about our excellent sushi restaurant, so now we will tell a little more about the game experience. Above is a photo of me with a ticket I found on the ground, this was a lower section ticket with a face value of over $100. We turned it into the information desk, we can only hope that whomever lost it was able to recover it.

Earlier in the day while touring through the electronics areas we realized that the camera prices were almost as low as the deal that we got in Hong Kong, sensing that we could save ourselves a flight to HK we purchased a new telephoto lens (140-600mm) which really made for some great baseball photos, that's me with the new lens above. We also bought Tina a new camera so that we wouldn't have to continue fighting over who will be taking the pictures with the high-end camera. We bartered hard with this guy and think that we managed to get a good deal, but in the end we couldn't get him to throw in a $5 mini tripod for free...
Pre-game all of the fans in the outfield will lower items to be signed by the players, the whole outfield wall looks like this.
Despite the excitement of the game, we noticed that a lot of the businessmen that game to the game were dozing off. I guess that the Western crowd just isn't as loud as the standard Japanese baseball crowd.
I don't even know what to say about these A's fans, each of them were in a different animal costume. This was game two, and it was their belief that wearing the outfits had helped the A's to win.