Christmas in Tokyo
We went in for some good old KFC. KFC means Christmas in Japan. For decades Japanese have been celebrating Christmas with a barrel of fried chicken. Some lights and a small Christmas tree we picked up in Akihabara set the holiday mood in our Kawasaki apartment. It wasn’t quite the same as home but it was pretty good for a traveling Christmas. Outside our apartment was a beautiful bamboo forest. The Greater Tokyo area seems to be full of them so it was no surprise to find it completely empty whenever we visited.
Just before Christmas we stayed in a capsule hotel (photo in previous blog). This was a highlight of our Japan trip, at least for me. Felt like one night on a space ship…Guests were assigned matching pyjamas upon checking in and walked around in bare feet. Complete with manga reading room and free capsule toys, this won’t be something we’ll forget.
We spent New Years in Yokohama, which is a 30-minute train ride south of Tokyo. We stayed in a one-bedroom apartment above a metal workshop run by a charming and shy Japanese man. He took us to Chinatown in downtown Yokohama followed by a Sushi restaurant with an automated order and sushi delivery system. The nicest Airbnb yet, the loft included separate rooms with views in different directions, a fancy stereo system and a roof deck with 360 degree views of the neighborhood. The host decorated and renovated the apartment himself with a “surf” theme. We were sad to leave this place, especially as our next Airbnb, also in Yokohama, is more Tokyo-sized.
We discovered that Japan comes to a grinding halt the first week of January for New Years. Many restaurants are closed and the kids are out of school. A much-deserved break I’m sure. Our second Yokohama Airbnb, out of the way in a northern suburb, seemed like a ghost town. We have four more days in the area before heading to the forests of Saitama Prefecture.
Lineup for KFC Christmas dinner pick-up in Kawasaki.
Our KFC Christmas barrel!
Setup for Christmas dinner.
Decorated for Christmas in Kawasaki.
Futon bedroom.
Kawasaki neighbourhood (southwest of Tokyo).
Our Kawasaki apartment building.
Quiet bamboo forest behind our Kawasaki apartment.
View from a Kawasaki hilltop on one of many morning walks.
Walking through Akihabara, Tokyo.
Arcade machine in an alley (Akihabara, Tokyo).
Cat sculpture in a bookstore! Downtown in Ginza, Tokyo.
Sarah checking out the fruit. So many oranges everywhere.
Tokyo Imperial Palace.
Harajuku is known for its crepes.
Tokyo Ginza neighbourhood.
Conveyor built sushi in Shinjuku, Tokyo. About $1-2 per plate.
Packages left in public, very safe!
View from Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.
Fancy melons for sale, some are a couple hundred dollars each.
Stairway in the Tokyu Hands department store has a calorie counter on it……..
Akihabara neighbourhood, our favorite Tokyo neighbourhood. We spent a lot of time there.
VW bus driving Tokyo.
Harmonica Alley in Tokyo’s Kichijoji neighborhood. Lots of small pubs and eateries.
Kichijoji restaurant, with great skewers and beer.
Harajuku alley with neat little shops.
Harajuku entertainers. Harajuku is known for youth fashion.
Yokohama, with our extremely hospitable Airbnb host.
Downtown Yokohama by the piers.
Lineup to take photos with this painting…….
Yokohama Chinatown.
View from our Yokohama apartment rooftop.
This is our Yokohama apartment, one of the nicest places we have stayed yet on our budget!
Sarah in our Yokohama apartment.
Downtown Yokohama.
Our second Yokohama apartment, in a quiet residential neighborhood. Mt. Fuji is visible on the horizon.
Public playground near our Yokohama apartment, it was hard to break Sarah away.
Bye Bye Kansai
Sarah and I left the Kansai region for Tokyo. Below is a photo collection of the quirky and cute little things we liked in the area. We will miss you, Kansai!
Japan
After two months of visiting our families in Canada and the USA we made our way back to Asia two weeks ago. We flew directly back to Nanjing, China and then took the plane to Osaka via a train to Shanghai. 45hours+ of traveling was not the most efficient way to reach Japan but was by far the cheapest. We spread it out with a few days in China to get over jet lag.
We are staying in the Kansai region for about a month before heading to Tokyo for Christmas. From our apartment near Osaka we are within an hour train ride to many famous tourist spots such as Kyoto, Kobe, downtown Osaka and Nara.
I suppose if I could use one word to describe Japan, it would be cute. Everything is cute, from the traffic cones to the little ice packs included in your grocery bag upon checkout to keep food cold. Considerable aesthetic care is taken for every detail. On our walk to the Osaka subway there are little potted plants on the sidewalk placed by neighbors, kindergarteners walking in line wearing matching uniforms and many, many students dressed in suits from the nearby college. Downtown Osaka is filled with capsule toy (gashapon) machines, anime, manga and many toy shops. This neighborhood reminds me of the little city maps I used to lay out on the floor and place my toy cars on, kind of like Brio. Buildings are generally closer to the sidewalks and the street furniture is smaller and seems more human-sized, generating a cozy feeling.
Now there’s much more to Japan and I hope to learn a little more about those aspects over the next couple months. I don’t know much about the darker side of Japanese culture and the challenges people face or the daily sacrifices made to create such a beautiful society but as a traveller I see a simple aesthetic quality and very kind people. I don’t need much else.
Our Nanjing hostel’s backyard. We spent two nights here as we passed through China.
Our apartment building in Northern Osaka. We are on the second floor with a river view. $30 Canadian a night!
Our Osaka apartment. It’s very small. The top bunk bed is motorized to provide more space.
Numerous running, biking and walking paths in our neighborhood go along the canals.
We walk this way to the local supermarket. The streets are so clean and quiet.
So much attention to details. Cute (kawaii)!
North of us is Minoo Park. There are monkeys, but unfortunately we didn’t see them.
Beautiful Kyoto is about an hour’s train ride away.
Cute traffic signs in Kyoto.
World famous Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto.
Thousands of Torii gates line the shrine’s paths.
The trains are quiet, clean and, naturally, colour matched.
Train workers riding the local train.
Sarah and I are suffering a capsule toy addiction.
One of the capsule toys. This is a fellow from the anime movie “Your Name.”
Night walk along the downtown Osaka canals. This is the very lively Dotonbori neighborhood.
We were interviewed by these two for a Tokyo morning show. They asked questions around why we liked Japan and Osaka.
Nanjing
Nanjing is just a 2-hour train ride northwest from Shanghai. The Shanghai train station was the busiest I have ever seen (even more so than in Beijing, where I was one year ago). We arrived early to deal with the security and lines and ended up sitting on the concrete floor waiting for our train for 3+ hours.
Nanjing is a very different city from Shanghai. It is the old capital of China and the name translates to “Southern Capital”. It’s a very beautiful city filled with trees, people on bikes and a modern transit system.
We are staying in an AirBnB on the 11th floor of the “Excellence Building” just east of the city center. We are across the street from a school, and about 1,000 students can be seen every morning and afternoon doing stretches and exercises. Also visible is a military academy with joggers running a track in formation every day at 6AM. The neighbourhood is popular with computer stores, which sell and pack printers, graphics cards, ink cartridges etc. Even in our building many of the other apartments are filled with order fulfillment centers and at times the hallway is so flooded with boxes we can’t get by. Late at night we hear them taping and closing cardboard boxes.
Sarah and I walked around Xuanwu Lake just north of our apartment. It’s one of the most beautiful lakes we’ve ever visited. Beautiful trees, open grassy areas and views of the Nanjing skyline with a foreground of lotus plants floating in the water. As the sun set people assembled on the many islands set in the middle of the lake. We saw dance groups, exercise groups, bands and a kite-flying group with beautiful kites lit up with LED lights for night flying. As I mentioned in another post, the ages mix so well in China. We saw grandparents taking their grandchildren for walks, teenagers on dates, young families and everything in between.
On our last day in China we were reminded of the importance of double-checking our address registration. A police officer escorted us into an unmarked minivan a la some horror movie and drove us to a police station 20 minutes north to give us a 30-second speech on making sure our host has registered us. No fines though and all’s well that ends well. Lesson learned! This was quite a way to end our month in China. We are flying back now to North America where we will stay for two months and deal with any reverse culture shock.
Sarah and I waited for our train to Nanjing on the floor of the Shanghai train station.
Our Nanjing neighborhood.
Our apartment, quite small but with views of beautiful sunsets.
Our building, the “Excellence Building”.
People packing boxes throughout the day and night in our building’s hallways.
Community spirit in our neighborhood.
Fellow taking a nap across the street from our building.
We watched the middle school students performing daily group exercise from our apartment window.
Sunset looking towards downtown Nanjing.
Our neighborhood.
The Nanjing people are very friendly. We found our favorite soup place where the customer chooses which food to have boiled for them. The owners asked to take a picture with us.
Nanjing Massacre Museum.
Nanjing’s city wall was the longest in the world at time of construction (1390) and the remaining portions extend about 25km.
On the city wall.
Sarah on the wall with temple and downtown Nanjing visible in background.
Met some locals on the wall who were excited to get some selfies with us.
Absolutely beautiful Xuanwu Lake near downtown Nanjing.
Xuanwu Lake and its beautiful lotus plants.
Nanjing’s Walmart. Felt quite similar to the Walmarts in the West. A good way to ease back home.
This is China
Sarah and I arrived in Shanghai a couple weeks ago. Shanghai, with a metropolitan population just shy of Canada’s, feels very different from Ho Chi Minh.
Once we settled in and went for a walk my first impression was I’ve gone deaf. How could this city, one of the largest in the world, feel so empty? After three months of scooters whizzing by and constant honking in Ho Chi Minh, Shanghai feels empty and quiet.
People here pay for everything from groceries to hand-spun noodles using their WeChat app, drive brand new imported cars and most scooters are quiet electric models. Compared to Vietnam, the people seem to interact less in public. In Ho Chi Minh, a great deal of daily life takes place on the sidewalk, not so in Shanghai. There are very few cafes, which we found disappointing as we very much appreciated the cafe culture in Vietnam. The cost of living, naturally, is much higher here also, so when we do find a cafe it’s Western prices.
Our first apartment was in the southern Pudong area of Shanghai. The apartment was, as is typical in China, in a large cluster of apartment buildings enclosed by gates. There are stores, schools, little parks – all the essentials are within the walls. From our window we could see men enjoying a smoke from their window and watch groups of ladies walking slowly down the street immersed in conversation. There were elderly people who had difficulty walking, the “too cool for school” teenage boys who avoid eye contact and wear basketball shorts, young women dressed up in the latest fashions, families with babies strolling back and forth and everything in between. A total mixture of people which is absent from the neighbourhoods I’ve lived in in the West.
Our second Shanghai apartment is on the 19th floor of an apartment building closer to the city center. We can see the Shanghai Tower (second tallest building in the world) from our apartment window. This reminds me of our Hanoi apartment, however, much smaller at around 300 sq. feet. At night we are entertained by the most amazing thunderstorms I have ever seen. The sky is lit up constantly as lightning strikes in the distance dozens of times per minute.
A few days ago we took the line 3 metro to Jiangyang Road terminal point (1.5 hours each way). Mostly factories and 35 degree celsius heat, but once we walked a bit we came upon large apartment complexes (behind gates of course), small malls and plenty of interested locals (probably wondering what on earth we were doing in the far edges of Shanghai). This is our last day here, on Wednesday we leave Shanghai and head to Nanjing for two weeks.
Maglev train we took from the Shanghai airport. Travelled at 430 km/hr.
View from our first apartment in south Pudong, Shanghai.
Our favourite lunch restaurant in Pudong. Meals were about $2-3.
French Concession neighborhood, Shanghai. Very empty with little traffic, perhaps because it is summer.
View from our second Airbnb, 19th floor.
Our second Airbnb building is visible in the middle of the photo.
Small evening market in Huangpu, near our second apartment.
View from Shanghai Tower, 121st floor, highest observation deck in the world at 561 metres (2nd tallest building in Asia). Looking over the Oriental Pearl TV Tower in the Pudong financial district and Huangpu River.
View from Shanghai Tower looking south back towards our apartment. We are staying in the clump of buildings to the right of the Nanpu Bridge (first bridge visible).
View from Shanghai Tower, looking at the “Bottle Opener” building (Shanghai World Financial Center building, 492m tall, 5th tallest building in Asia).
View from the Bund at night. Visible from left to right is the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Bottle Opener and Shanghai Tower.
“Marriage Market.” Parents and grandparents come to find a suitable partner for their children/grandchildren and to socialize. The papers on the umbrellas have resumes describing the qualifications of their family’s eligible bachelor/bachelorette.
Suburb north of Shanghai. We received many inquisitive looks.
Mall we came across near the Jiangyang Road stop outside of Shanghai.
The inside of the mall with boats for children.
Sarah cooking cabbage and a $2 FamilyMart meal at our apartment.
Building under construction by “The Artistic Fair-Faced Concrete Engineering Expert” company in the M50 neighborhood.
M50 art neighborhood, Shanghai. Young artists are being replaced by modern design studios and expensive galleries.