Shanghai Museum, Tianzifang, Yuyuan Gardens, French Concession and the Maglev :)

There are many, many milk tea shops in Shanghai, some with long queues outside. It's a little more difficult to find coffee shops (especially ones that aren't Starbucks or Costa) but we managed to find a good one near People's Square and had coffee and a muffin for breakfast on Saturday, then wandered through the park at People's Square, admiring the extremely impressive giant floral sculpture before checking out Shanghai Museum. We saw ancient bronze artefacts and jade ornaments, beautiful pottery from ancient times up until the late nineteenth century, calligraphy and lovely paintings. There was also a visiting exhibition of landscapes from the Tate Britain, so a whole range of things to see.

We found a nice restaurant and had dumplings, shallot pancakes, rice cakes and Chinese broccoli for lunch (so much food) then wandered through Tianzifang, which is an old area of former workshops, now with many small shops ranging from boutiques and art studios to souvenir shops and little craft businesses. There are winding alleys like Xintiandi, but many more of them and not so perfectly manicured, which gives it more of a charm I think.

Mr Dr L was on shopping duty at the Baby Sale to End All Baby Sales, so we had running updates through the day on the 70% off deals for baby Dr L, arriving in September. We met up with him in the evening to go to Yuyuan Gardens, where the ancient temple of the city god is, but the main attraction here was the newer streets of old-style buildings with lights on all the roofs and shops and food everywhere. The place (like most places in Shanghai) was buzzing, and we spent a while trying to find the best place to get a stone seal carved with my name in Chinese. In the end, the best price and the nicest stones were from a man at a little store, who power-drilled the characters into the stone and demonstrated the seal on gold-leaf-sprinkled rice paper.

People were wandering around with large dumplings with straws sticking out of them, which I had heard of before and wanted to try. They were sold out at one busy food court place, but we found a small restaurant that did them for 20 yuan (about $4 Australian), which Mr Dr L thought was expensive, even for a large dumpling. It was good though - crab soup inside that you suck up the straw, and then pull apart the rest with chopsticks. I also tried Nanjing rice balls with sweet sesame filling which were pretty good, served in a clear soup.

On the way back to the metro station, we passed several large groups of older people line dancing to multiple sets of loud, duelling music. Apparently this is outlawed near many residential buildings because of the noise it makes, but it's extremely popular with older generations, and the younger generations complain about the noise and people dancing late into the night...

My final day in Shanghai, we went to find the French Concession, which is actually a very large district that contains Xintiandi and Tianzifang (so we'd actually already been there multiple times). After a good brunch in Xintiandi, we walked down streets lined with plane trees and tiny shops to find a neighbourhood of some old French Concession buildings, Si Nan Mansions. There was a market on with stalls of jewellery and tea, as well as a man who was making candy floss flowers. Most of the buildings here have been converted into shops, restaurants, breweries or Starbucks/Costa, though some still seem to be lived in. We came upon Zhou En-Lai's house, which is now a museum describing the shaky times in the 1940s when the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party were vying over rule - the Kuomintang posted secret spies across the road, which the CPC guards had to keep an eye on.

After some more wandering we found Bridge 8, which is an old car factory now turned into a creative district with a huge art and design bookshop with books all up the three-storey walls, but which was invitiation only (a bit frustrating). Across the road there was an art gallery with an exhibition that Dr L said was from Korea - I didn't realise until later that she meant North Korea. The many, many paintings were beautiful, but a huge range of styles all mixed up together, with impressionist cherry blossom scenes, idyllic farmland, happy workers in a factory, stylish young women in traditional or modern dress, horses, mountains, romantically crashing waves upon cliffs... I was particularly struck by a wall-sized seemingly-dystopian painting of Blade Runner-like modern towers at the edge of a harbour with traditional fishing boats moored below, wreathed in mist, juxtaposed with a natural landscape on its adjacent wall. Definitely an experience, and one I quite enjoyed.

Next up was Fuxing Park, which is one of the oldest public parks in the city and beautifully manicured. There were lots of families running around on the main grass area and people flying kites, people sitting under wrought iron arches with ivy running over them, around fountains and the swirling rose garden beds. By this time we were getting quite tired, so we looked for a cafe that wasn't Starbucks or Costa and managed to find a beautiful one in an old house near the park, filled with interesting antiques, a verdant bricked courtyard and an upstairs with a bar, Tiffany lamps and 30s music.

Soon it was time to get my bags and make for the airport for the next leg of my trip. Dr L and Mr Dr L kindly took me to an easy transfer point for the maglev train to the airport, which takes 8 minutes to go the 30km to the airport. Some of them are express trains and go over 400km/hr, but unfortunately I didn't get one of those and we only got up to 301km/h. Amazing to see everything speeding past like you're in a plane about to lift off.

And then I was onto my 18 hour trip to Stockholm...

Sydney to Shanghai: the plane, Xintiandi and the Bund

Every few years I do another post saying 'Wow! It's been X years since I last posted! I should do more on this blog!' So here's the latest one. :)

Wow! It's been 5 years since I last posted! I'm on my way to Europe via Shanghai for a conference in Sweden and roadtripping with my bro and his beau and friend, so I thought it'd be good opportunity to document some stuff :) I went to the US for the first time in the middle of last year, and Austria in November/December (coincidentally, about the same time I was there in 2012) but the travel diaries from there are on paper and scrivener... such as I did them.

In any case, I'm now sitting in my seat taxiiing down the runway in Sydney while the safety video plays and everyone ignores it. I was going to walk to the airport (I live half an hour walk from the Sydney International Terminal which is awesome!) but it was kind of raining and cold and my clothes are geared for summer so I took the 2 minute $18 train ride instead. I successfully checked in and notified the airline I'm doing a 144 hr TWOV in Shanghai (transit without visa), and have been reading the inflight magazine, which informs me that China Eastern now flys directly to Stockholm! Unfortunately I've booked with Air France, so will have to stopover at Charles de Gaulle... There's lots of interesting tourist information about Sweden though, with such gems as "A winter's day is long and cold in Sweden and life cannot be without cheese".

***

Almost there! I've watched Woman in Gold (excellent), Mermaid (a Chinese dramedy involving mermaids, also excellent in a very different way), done a reasonable amount of work and have been practising my Mandarin. So far I've got hello, thank you and good bye down, but still working on I'm sorry (duì bù qî) and 'how much is this?' (zhège duōshao qián?).

***

I successfully managed to get through the 144 hr visa queue and get my 'transit without visa' visa! Then, with the help of my friend Dr L on the other end of the phone, I managed to get a taxi to her place :) I found out from some small print on the back of my departure card that I needed to register myself as a temporary resident within the first 24 hrs, so our plan for Friday was to check out Xīntiandi and the police station, then the Bund and Oriental Pearl Tower.

After xiaolongbao and soy milk for breakfast, we took the subway to Xintiandi. This area is a former residential area of Shinkumen (stone gateway) houses which was redeveloped into a boutique-restaurant-cultural quarter, with the building that was the site of the first meeting of the Chinese communist party at one side. It's an incredibly successful development that with a mix of historic buildings and new additions, alleyways and hidden corners to explore. We had lunch at a nice Spanish place, then went to find a police station.

Registering as a temporary resident is something your hotel does for you if you stay in a hotel, but if you stay with a friend you need them to show proof they own the property you're staying in...! We think it's probably the same procedure as for long-term temporary residents, and they haven't caught up wth the new short transit visas. It was a bit of an adventure, because we had to go to the police station twice, once to find out all the documentation we needed and a second time to hand it all in, with photocopies. Then we retired to Dr L's and had hot chocolate before venturing out in the rain to the Bund.

The Bund is technically 33 buildings built in different European styles by invited architects, lining the west side of the Huangpu River. Reclamation in the last few decades created a wide promenade beside the water, from which you can look across the river to the newer Pudong district and see the Oriental Pearl Tower and Shanghai Tower (over 600m tall). It was just on dusk when we arrived, with light rain, and we wandered along the promenade admiring the brightly-lit older buildings on one side and the phantasmagorical light shows playing out on most of the modern buildings. Some of the buildings have advertisements, as if they're Times Square billboards at 100:1 scale, and some have beautiful patterns, like the building with a golden butterfly slowly moving its wings. We took the ferry across the river, which is a really good way to see the lights, especially given it's only 4 yuan, but halfway across the river, I realised I’d lost my camera somehow. Once we got to the other side, we asked the ticket office man to call back to the opposite bank ticket office, and waited while they checked to see if they could find it. Luckily, they did! I've now attached my camera to a lanyard, which makes me look more like a tourist, but at least I won't lose it. Though I probably shouldn't jinx it by saying that...

We met up with Mr Dr L on the Bund side of the river for Shanghai fried buns (really good) and dodged the rain (not very successfully) back to their place for the night. I got pretty excited in the metro, because they have flashy light displays on the tunnel walls that show ads as you're speeding past them. It must be something similar to a frisbee I had once where you could make it spell out your name as you threw it, but a lot more sophisticated... unfortunately it doesn't photograph or video well...

Turkey Days 7 and 8: Pamukkale, Night Buses and Istanbul's Grand Bazaar

I'm back in London now, and it's about twenty degrees cooler than it was in Turkey. Back to work tomorrow...

The day after Ephesus and our Turkish bath, we got a shuttle to the train station for our train to Denizli, a town further inland famous for cotton. The train was very full and we took a while to find seats, and once we did I spent the remaining three hours sleeping, or looking it the window at the tall hills and fields and towns. From Denizli we took a bus to Pamukkale, which is famous for its white terraces.

When I was tiny, we used to get pizza from a place with a poster of the terraces displayed proudly on the wall, and I always wanted to go there. I was very excited when I saw it was included on the itinerary, and it was just as amazing as I'd thought. You can see it as a white section of hill as you approach, and then as you get closer the white resolves into cliffs and terraces and tiny dots of people moving up and down. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant where the owner performed dramatic caricatures of each of our nationalities (including an attempted haka), then reapplied our sunscreen to every bit of exposed skin and walked up to the terraces.

At first it looks a lot like a ski slope, but when you get right on the travertines you feel the rough calcium beneath your feet and see the rivulets of water and patterns in the stone. I decided the texture was most like dragon skin, and if anyone ever needs to take a plaster cast of a material for a movie or some such thing, they should go to Pamukkale.

In the eighties the terraces had hotels built on top of them and a road following them up (actually on the travertines. Can't quite believe it) but when they became a World Heritage Site they demolished the hotels and replaced the road with artificial pools. The pools still look particularly man-made, but I guess they're a lot better than the road and the hotels. You're still allowed to walk on the travertines as long as you don't wear shoes, but you're not really supposed to swim in the pools because it contaminates the water that should be forming the travertines. Lots of people do, however, and I wondered if they had some kind of system in place so that the water is directed over the natural travertines when the tourists aren't there, and over the man-made parts (which don't matter so much in my opinion) when they aren't. The natural pools didn't have any water running over them when we were there, so hopefully they're doing something like that.

By the time we reached the top my feet were a bit raw and everyone was very hot. There are ruins of the ancient city of Hieropolis at the top, as well as a swimming pool with real ancient columns in it and a place where you can have Doctor Fish 'give you a pedicure' (eat dead skin off your feet). Five of us tried the Doctor Fish and spent the first few minutes squealing and clutching at the sides of the tank as all the other customers sat looking sophisticated. It got better after that, and after the fish and the Turkish bath we were confident there was no dead skin anywhere on our bodies.

We wandered around the ruins a bit and then made our way back down the travertines, which I think was better than coming up with the whole white expanse spread before you and the plains below and the mountains in the distance. Absolutely incredible.

We had our last group dinner on the roof of a hotel beneath grape vines and left the Aqueduchess to continue her journeys in Cappadoccia, where they filmed the cave-house bits of Star Wars. The rest if us took a bus back to Denizli before getting a luxury night bus all the way to Istanbul. I managed to sleep about half the way, but by the time we got to Istanbul I was very tired. Our airport shuttle didn't leave until 1pm, so we spent the morning wandering the Grand Bazaar and using up most (or in my case, all) of our money. I think I got some good deals - best was 75% off, but that was more because I didn't have the correct change than because of my skill in bargaining.

It was sad to say goodbye to our group, but I think we'll stay in touch. Glamgirl and I were on the same flight back to London. We ate far too much free sample Turkish Delight in Istanbul Airport and searched for chocolate and Swiss army knives on our stop in Zurich airport. I found chocolate in the shape of a Swiss army knife, and then we boarded the plane with the least hassle I've ever encountered - no lines, just scan your own ticket, show your passport and walk onto the plane where everyone was very calm and reserved. I was amazed by the flight attendants' ability to switch immediately between French and English and German.

Now considering a trip to Barcelona. Hmmm.

 

 

Turkey Day 6: Ephesus, Selçuk and a Turkish Bath

I think my body is now about thirty percent sunscreen.

We got into Selçuk around noon and had lunch on the terrace roof of our hotel, looking out over the town and up to the medieval castle on a hill in the middle of the city. Again, lots of beautiful mezze and then a choice of fish, beef or chicken. The beef came on kebabs stuck artistically into half a tomato. We spent the afternoon wandering around Selçuk looking at the Basilica of St John, taking pictures of the one remaining column of the Temple of Artemis and visiting the museum, which has artefacts from Ephesus including lots of statues of Eros, most of which I found very creepy (little wise winged baby staring at you? Creepy). I especially found a gigantic emperor's head creepy, because it was carved to look like a baby's face. Lots of beautiful ancient jewellery and glass bottles and weapons, as well as marble upon marble upon marble.

At four o'clock it was cool enough to go to the ancient city of Ephesus, it being only about 32 degrees Celsius. We entered from the top and wound down through the valley, passing fields of columns and huge stones laid out for cataloguing as well as the smaller amphitheatre built into the hill. When you stand in the centre of the amphitheatre you hear your voice echo around.

We walked along ancient marble-paved streets, saw a bath house and a public toilet and lots and lots of cats who were very happy to pose for us.

At the bottom of the valley stands Ephesus's great library, which was the third biggest of the ancient world with 125,000 scrolls. They have done a lot of restoration work on it, and you've probably seen a picture of it with its tall pillared facade.

Inside there are two shafts that you can take flash pictures down and get back glimpses of the tomb inside. From the great library you walk through to the wide expanse of the agora market place with its double columns on all four sides, and then up to the grand amphitheatre where Bono's sung a concert. They're still restoring the amphitheatre, so I'd love to see what it looks like when it's all finished. Today you're allowed access to the bottom set of tiers and the stage with its incredible acoustic. The wind would have blown off the sea and carried voices even farther two thousand years ago, but the sea's now around eight kilometres away because of silt build-up.

Dinner was to be at a hotel up on the hill. Our transport arrived: a van and an open jeep. Glamgirl, the Aqueduchess, Pistachio Girl and I claimed the jeep and clutched the roll bars as we hurtled up the hill between houses and rugged fields. The hotel had a terrace with a view over the whole city, and a swimming pool. Within five minutes we were floating in the pool with drinks and taking in the scents of the barbecue.

The setting sun lured us out to take pictures, and then we had a beautiful dinner in the gathering dusk while three tiny pet dogs scampered around our feet. Our guide taught us some Turkish dances, one of which was a Turkish take on musical chairs where I came second. We all agreed that it was the most incredible place to have a meal, on the terrace looking over the city with its basilica and castle as the sun set behind the hills and the stars came out.

But the day was not yet over! We still had a Turkish Bath to go, an experience that many of the group viewed with trepidation. The atmosphere in the waiting room was thick with nerves, and many jokes were made about tea towels (the attire we were to wear into the bath house, though we were allowed togs/swimsuits as well).

The bath house itself is a domed room with shower stalls along two walls and a circular marble platform in the middle. The air is hot and humid, so much so that you need to take a cold shower at regular intervals. After about ten minutes of lying on the hot marble, the production line was put into motion: first the right-hand side marble bench, where the man scrubbed you down with scrubbers and exfoliated half your skin off in rolls, and then the left hand bench where another man soaped you up, slung you around the slippery marble and poured cold water over you. We had an extra oil massage after that in another room, with olive oil, and then got back to the hotel around 1am. A long night, but it was worth it.

Turkey Day 5: Ayvalik, Cunda and Swimming in the Aegean

The lack of sleep is building up. Others in our party sleep on the bus. I slave away writing blogs.

I last left you, if memory serves (and I am dubious about the quality of its service), on the bus to Ayvalik. Ayvalik is a lovely little town with fishing boats and cobbled alleyways crisscrossing the hill, and not so full of foreign tourists. Our hotel is in a beautiful former French embassy, with a courtyard in which we eat breakfast (by far the best breakfast so far, with spiced eggs and lime jelly mousse slice and filo-feta rolls), shutters, marble steps and painted ceilings. There's also a little alcove full of Turkish cushions where we spent a lot of time.

We walked along the waterfront and chose the boat we wanted to take out the next day, and then took Turkish taxi-buses (dolmus) to Cunda Island (pron. Junda) for dinner. Cunda has lots of restaurants all along the wharf, and we sat under a shade with the sea lapping away just feet from us. Dinner started with mezze: tsatsiki, red chopped-up stuff that was really good, eggplant, salad and bread. Then the fish came out completely whole and the waiter skilfully removed the bones right at the table. The sun set and the stars came out. A few cats wound round legs. Comments were made about this being an eating holiday - we've had a lot of very good food so far.

There was a tea/shisha house down the road, walls open to the elements and benches and cushions laid out. Locals sat and played cards or backgammon or smoked shisha, and we sat cross-legged in a square enclosure and drank tea and bira until the imam in the nearby mosque began the call to prayer at 11 o'clock. On the dolmus ride back to Ayvalik I sat in the boot on a little bench with Glamgirl, the Aqueduchess and Pistachio girl and arrived at the hotel with all bones intact.

There was a bit of free time the next morning so Kiwi Glamgirl and I explored the streets, climbing all the way to the top of the town's hill and their huge flagpole. There are stray cats and dogs everywhere in Turkey, and Ayvalik is no exception. At every corner was another photo opportunity: a beautiful house half in ruins, a young cat posing prettily by a door, the view down the cobbled alleyway to the sea. Ayvalik had a large Greek population that had to leave in the twenties because of a population swap, hence the ruined buildings. We'd stood staring at the view from the top for quite a while and I kept hearing clopping noises, which I didn't think that much of until Glamgirl noticed the horse in the dry-stone building below us. A bit further down the hill we found some goats in a house and a few more dogs happily wandering the streets.

At half past eleven we met everyone at the wharf and boarded 'Bambi', a wide wooden boat with benches and tables below and a deck above. The prow had a sort of plank extension where you could recreate Leonardo Dicaprio's King of the World moment, so we did that. Multiple times. You do actually feel like you're flying, if you can't see the boat below you and the sea is disappearing behind.

Bambi anchored in a small cove with incredibly clear water with a few other boats. This seems to be a popular thing to do for Turkish tourists, though we were the only foreign tourists, and the semi-locals jumped off the top deck into the crystal water. The sea was quite salty and buoyant, though not as warm as I'd expected. This first bay had warm and cold spots, and we spent much of our time finding the warm spots, or standing in the island's beach and spotting little striped fish. I jumped off the top deck, counting in bir, iki, uç (1, 2, 3), and feeling my stomach drop away as the sea rushed up.

When we emerged form the water, lunch was being served: salad, bread and freshly-fried sardines. The only sardines I've experienced were the horrible canned sort, but these were really good. I wasn't sure about swimming after eating, but when we got to the next cove the water was too inviting. You really needed a waterproof camera to capture the beautiful blue sky, the boat serene in the water, the islands with ruined churches atop them and the dark shadows of Greek mountains to the west. At one point Glamgirl got a text welcoming her to Greece and advising her of the roaming charges.

The next stop had much colder water and we didn't stay as long, and though I meant to get in at the stop after that, an icecream boat appeared and I had to get icecream in half a melon. The icecream was interesting and sort of stretchy, but amazing in the sun on a boat among Turkish islands.

Some of the other boats had slides, and one looked like a pirate ship. We advised our guide that, next time, we'd like a slide please. It was a lot of fun jumping off the deck, though, and we had a good time dancing to Turkish music.

Dinner back in Ayvalik was tost, a sort of toasted panini with meat, cheese, pickles and capsicum. There was a beautiful little cat sitting right by my feet with the most upright posture and open, hopeful face (I know I don't deserve anything, but I'm a good little cat, really I am, and very polite too), and quite a bit of my meat was given to the cat. The cat received it with its paws, ate it, and looked hopefully for the next bit. It gave Puss and Boots a run for his money with its sad face, too.

On the way back to the hotel we passed a cake shop and were lured in by the baklava, which was much cheaper than in Istanbul: three pieces for two lira, or the equivalent of about 60p. There was also an amazing chocolate pudding that tasted like chocolate mud cake batter and had profiteroles buried in it and pistachios on top.

The landscape is so much like New Zealand with its hills and sea. So far today I've struggled out of bed and managed to catch the bus which was moving away as we ran towards it, and I think now we've reached our destination. See you at the next wifi hotspot...

Edited to add: Oh! I forgot to mention the electrical fire on the boat! And the girl who had five changes of bikini for the boat ride, and managed to wear them all. There, I've mentioned them now.

Troy and Çanakkale

So I'm still on the bus I was on when I wrote yesterday's post. You'll be pleased to know we haven't fallen down any cliff faces into the sea (I was a bit worried there for a while, but we're back on solid sea-level ground now). The island of Lesbos can be seen just off the coast, and lots of the buildings we pass have solar cells on the roof. (At least I think it's Lesbos. That's what someone said.) The towns we've been past seem quite efficient: lots of houses in a small close-knit area, sometimes apartment buildings, surrounded by semi-wilderness. You do see quite a few skeletal buildings, some of which haven't ever been finished and some of which are ruins.

The reason I got up at 6.45 this morning was to catch a bus for Troy with the Aqueduchess. We crossed the Dardanelles by car ferry and set tyre on Asia for the first time, and it wasn't long before we were alighting outside the ancient city of Troy. I'd heard there wasn't much left, and was pleasantly surprised to find lots and lots of obviously-ruinous stones and some very well-preserved city walls. There were nine different cities on this site in nine different layers, which makes it difficult for archaeologists because to get to the first layer you have to dig down and destroy the other eight layers.

They have a large replica Trojan horse you can get inside and have your picture taken, so we did that while our guide explained that a likely theory for the horse is that it was actually a tribute statue to Poseidon. The layer that's generally accepted as the layer of Homer's Illiad was destroyed in an earthquake, so the theory goes that, rather than soldiers hiding inside a large wooden horse, the end of the war was aided by an earthquake. Poseidon is the Greek god of earthquakes and horses as well as the sea, so the Greeks may have built a horse statue to thank him for his aid in defeating the Trojans.

The foundations of the Homeric watch tower are still there hulking in front of the five-metre thick cementless wall of the citadel. You walk into the passage leading to one of the gates and turn a corner (the corner is to prevent battering rams being used), climb some steps and come across more ruins, and more and more beyond them. Roman numerals are everywhere, showing what layer a particular set of ruins belongs to, and our guide was good at explaining what each one was. The oldest town on this site existed five thousand years ago and held a thousand people, while the newest two were Greek and Roman cities. At one point there are three wells that were used for sacrifices - the wells would fill with blood rather than water.

I was impressed by the Homeric main ramp from the lower town to the citadel, which is still pretty flat after three thousand years. You wouldn't want to try to drag a battering ram up it.

I would have liked to stay longer at Troy, but we were back on the bus and arriving in Çanakkale by eleven. We had the most beautiful lamb kebab for lunch, sat in a cafe on the waterfront and then boarded the bus for Ayvalik, which is where I am now. I currently have Internet but may not for some time, so I'll post this now and give you all the details on Ayvalik later.

Hosca kalin!

Tokyo Day 3 (Saturday yes I'm slack): Malls, towers in Shinjuku, dinner & Pirates in Shibuya

We went out for breakfast at a local cafe, then took the train into Shinjuku and watched hundreds of people (I want to say thousands. There might have been thousands) cross at one of the crossings. There was a huge Pirates of the Caribbean poster along a wall of the station, so we posed in front of that and then ventured out into the crowds.

You get used to huge numbers of people. You stop being amazed and start trying to figure out where is the best part of the pavement to walk (where you’ll bump into the fewest people). Circus Girl took me to the most amazing mall that just kept going up and up and up. When I win Lotto, I’m coming back here. Many of the shop girls were dressed up as if they were on a catwalk, with huge long nails and professionally-styled hair, and they were insistently helpful. Shoe shops and clothes shops (one of which was called Sheep Dip...) and sock shops (many of these) and jewellery shops... Each seemed to have their own individual style, and I didn’t see any big chains that I knew from elsewhere.

I wanted to go up the government towers, so we left earlier than I would have liked and trekked over to the towers. Until recently they were the tallest buildings in Tokyo, and it’s free to get up to the observation deck. Halfway there I remembered about earthquakes and such and had to convince myself that the chances of a large earthquake occurring while I was in a skyscraper were minimal, and in any case Japan has very good seismic standards. When we got there, though, it seemed the tower was closed – there were signs out and the lobby was dark, and people better able to read signs than us were turning away. We took some pictures of the building from the ground and some statues instead, and walked back towards the centre to go to another karaoke place :)

We found a nice place in Shibuya for dinner, and then met Circus Girl’s friend at the cinema. The cinema is very slick and white and huge and crowded. It looked quite futuristic. We saw Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (in 3D and with Japanese subtitles) which I really enjoyed, and then took the train back home. It was a good night.

Tokyo Day 4 (Sunday): Harajuku

I’m trying to decide if I should post things while they’re still fresh, or wait until I’m not jetlagged and can write better. I have a feeling it will be a bit of both. Sunday now, Saturday later. Just to be completely backwards.

I woke at 7.06 to an earthquake (5.5) that went on for about 30s-minute. Circus Girl's house is pretty bouncy (it bounces when trucks go past) so we bounced around for a bit and then it stopped. Breakfast was some Japanese pastries, including a sweet potato roll and some healthy healthy Japanese tea. I took a bit longer packing than I thought I would (I guess that always happens), dragged my bags through to Nippori Station and stashed them in a locker there. I didn’t have any cash left so we went on a mission to find an ATM that would take my card, which turned out to be extremely difficult.

Our aim today was to see some cosplay outfits in Harajuku. Circus Girl took me to the bridge where they normally stand, but there weren’t any there. Maybe they were scared away by the rain forecast. I found a good ATM so I could actually have money, and we found a shop that sold the most amazing cosplay outfits: anything from anime-style dresses and sparkly Las Vegas dancer get-ups to traditional kimonos and Victorian suits.

After a bit (I’m sorry!) we went to McDonalds where I got a Teriyaki McBurger and a Coke glass that was the main reason I’d wanted to go to this particular fast-food place. The burger was quite good, if a little strange, and the McDonalds was packed even at 3pm. We saw some cosplay girls there, dressed in short dresses with lots of petticoats and their hair beautifully arranged. It didn’t seem the right place for a photo though...

By the time we left the restaurant it was pouring. Circus Girl and I huddled together and joined the sea of floating umbrellas in the road. There were some impressive puddles, so we still got pretty wet. We took refuge in a few shops and made our way back to the train station, took my last Tokyo internal train back to Nippori, and said good-bye.

So that was Tokyo. I think I would have liked more time to see everything and some lotto money to shop with...

Tokyo Day 2: Senso-ji temple, Tokyo National Museum, dinner and karaoke in Shibuya

(written Saturday)

Yesterday morning I took the train and the subway to Asakusa, grabbing a red bean bun with a panda printed on it on the way. Asakusa is home to the Senso-ji temple. You enter through a huge gate on the um... one of the sides (my sense of direction doesn’t work in the northern hemisphere) and walk down a long avenue lined with stalls and filled with people. From the gate you can see the temple and the five-storey pagoda beside it, which is pretty impressive.

Lots of people were giving offerings and lighting candles to put in cabinets, and lots of people were taking photographs so I didn’t feel too out of place. I couldn’t resist a pair of chopsticks from a stall, and some kind of foodstuff that I still don’t know the name of, but it had Japanese peach paste inside.

From Asakusa I took the subway back to Ueno, which is famous for its gardens and museums. The gardens are beautiful, with vistas aching for photos. I took many. There’s a statue of a man walking his dog, more temples and shrines, and hundreds of cherry blossom trees, though the cherry blossom season is well past.

There are many museums in the park, but I went to the Tokyo National Museum (I think. It’s now Monday and I can’t be sure. It was a National Museum, anyway), which has five buildings of different ages and architectural styles. I visited the main one, where the exhibits are all Japanese cultural artefacts, and spent a good few hours standing in awe before ancient statues, 8^th century samurai swords, beaten metal mirrors, calligraphy, silk paintings, samurai armour, kimono and pottery. They had a station set up where you could stamp your own samurai picture with different coloured stamps, layering them into a complete picture, so I did one of those.

I was meeting Circus Girl in Shibuya later, so I caught a train just before rush hour and stared out the window at all the buildings. So, so many buildings. I’d thought Tokyo would be all high-rise apartments, but most of the buildings you see are two-storey detached houses, squeezed in together with less than a metre between them. In the old days, fire used to break out periodically in Tokyo (formerly Edo), and these were called the Flowers of Edo. Tokyo’s built upon the ashes of all those fires. Hopefully nothing catches hold nowadays...

We roved the streets of Shibuya looking for good restaurants and karaoke places. Normally Shibuya is ablaze with neon lights, but they’re saving power because of the earthquake and subsequent troubles, so at least half of them were off. It was still a pretty impressive sight.

The restaurant we chose in the end had no non-smoking area, but it did have little screened booths, you could order by wireless touch screen and everything was 270 yen (about NZ$4). So many people smoke here, and as Circus Girl pointed out, mostly the best seats in restaurants are in the smoking areas. Our booth wasn’t too smoky, however, so it was fine in the end.

There were seven of us, and we each ordered some things and shared them. I had sake, which actually wasn’t too strong, and teriyaki chicken, octopus balls (balls with octopus in them), edamame (soy beans), sprouts, pizza (I didn’t order that, I swear), crispy chicken cartilage (better than it sounds) and raw fish. Yum.

Then we retreated to karaoke, Japan style, where you sit in a room with your friends and use a remote to pick songs. We only had an hour and half there, which wasn’t really enough, but we had to go to catch the last train. The train was a sardine train, with people running at the doors and pushing their way in even when you thought no-one else could make it. I wonder why they don’t run trains all night...

Abu Dhabi: The Stopover

Haha! An airport that does free internet, rather than just free wireless!!! I am in Abu Dhabi, and it is 4.30 in the morning. I’m sitting by Gate 32 (my gate is Gate 29, but I went exploring and then stopped when I realised all the travelators were going away from my gate and it was going to take a while to get back) in the strong air conditioning and wondering whether I ought to sleep or not.

The flight was good – I got a window seat, though there wasn’t much to see, and watched I am Number Four. I couldn’t get a window seat on the Abu Dhabi to London leg, but it’s okay because THEY HAVE A PLANE NOSE CAMERA. Why have they never thought of this before? (Maybe they have, and I’ve just never been on a plane with one.) There is a highly limited supply of window seats on big planes, and if you don’t get one you have to sit and imagine the views going past below. But with a nose cam, you can see AND you can sit in an aisle seat where you can get out easily! Genius!

As we came in I saw some misty lights crossing in the darkness below, and my immediate thought was camels with lanterns, passing in the night (has anyone read that story about camels with traffic lights around their necks?). I guess they were cars, though.

I’m also happy because I guessed where north was, checked Google Earth to see if I was correct and I was, within about 20 degrees. And it’s dark, so no help from the sun. Maybe my sense of direction will come back to me.

There were no air bridges, so we got a bus to the terminal, standing room only. At 3am it was 29 degrees and humid, which I was glad of because the plane was very dry. I followed the crowd into the terminal and along for a while, following the signs (I thought) but after about ten minutes of walking I realised we were going to Terminal 1, and my gate is at Terminal 3. So I had to backtrack. I’m allowed a few mistakes at 3.30am. Or 11.30pm. Or 9.30am.

I really have no idea what time it is.

More Tokyo stuff soon – I’ve got to write it first :D

Tokyo Day 1 (second half): Imperial Gardens and mall

...I lugged my suitcase onto the train and sat in a corner (which probably wasn’t the best thing to do, considering the number of people that later got on), nearly missed my stop but rushed out just in time. They play happy music to tell you how long the doors will be open for – I guess it gets a bit annoying after a while.

After an iced tea and a muffin I had to ask for scissors to get out of its packaging, I shoved my suitcase in a locker and wandered out of the station with no real direction in mind. Within ten minutes I had avoided a camera crew, gone into a bamboo shop and been presented with a free pen and small chipmunk toy, and bought a dangly phone thing. I hurried back to the station, scared that if I went into any more shops my supply of money would rapidly decline along with the space in my suitcase.

I took a train into Tokyo Station and walked the streets. It’s incredibly quiet for a city, with no buzzers or songs for the lights, just the low hum of traffic. At one point I heard a bird chirping, but it may have been a traffic signal. I walked around the walls of the Imperial Palace for a while taking pictures, and then ventured into the East Gardens of the Palace. Amazing old walls and guard houses and beautiful trees. I bought the most highly-packaged ice-cream I have ever seen (which was actually quite good) and went in search of a department store near Tokyo Station.

I found Daimaru (I think...), which is absolutely gigantic and has the entire ground floor devoted to specialty food items: the largest array of incredibly coloured and presented food I’ve ever seen. I took the escalators up and up and up and found the kimono department, and the sparkly stickers-on-things department, and the beautiful boxes department. One of the boxes was made of paua.

I met my friend Circus Girl at the station where I’d left my suitcase, and we hauled my bags down little alleys to her house. The entire suburb seems to be made of little alleys. We went to dinner at a restaurant near the station, and ordered karaage chicken, Caesar salad, tofu and shrimp rolls, red beans and green tea ice-cream. They also came out with free appetisers in little dishes, which were very nice.

Tokyo Day 1 (half of): flight and train to Tokyo

Tokyo! I haven’t seen much of it yet because the airport is 60km from the city and I’m now waiting at an underground station for the cheap slow train (I figure I’ll be able to see more anyway if I go slow). I managed to snatch bits of sleep on the plane, in between eating teriyaki chicken and scrambled eggs and melon and watching Tangled in short gasps (enjoyable) and taking pictures of the sun as it rose at 4.30am. I think I’ve had enough sleep, though I really can’t be sure.

There weren’t many people on the plane – about one to every three seats – so I was able to spread out a bit and have two pillows. Unfortunately there was quite a bit of turbulence (e.g. 280km/hr cross-winds) so I couldn’t really take my seatbelt off. I was on the side of the plane that saw the sunrise (even if the wing was in the way of the actual sun), but didn’t get to see Tokyo or Mt Fuji as we flew in.

It seems warm here – hooray after Sydney being cold. I’m determined to use the few Japanese phrases I know as much as possible, and I’m enjoying listening to the Japanese announcements. I can’t figure out how to use the internet at the airport, so this will be sent later...

It’s now later and I did more today, but I shall tell you about it tomorrow :)

Book #17: China – The Year of the Shanghai Shark by Mo Zhi Hong

You hear a lot about structure and plot and the perfect way to do them, but a lot of the time books don’t conform to the rules. The Year of the Shanghai Shark is one of these – every chapter shows you an important person in the narrator’s life, and you come to know the character  indirectly through his friends. The narrative skips forward and back in time, and threads are dropped and caught up again throughout. You see things in snippets, building the story like a mosaic. And it works.

Hai Long lives with his uncle in Dalian, a port city in North East China. The book covers his life until about 2003 (I think), focusing mostly on the years leading up to SARS and Yao Ming’s NBA basketball debut (both important events in Hai Long’s life). I’ve never been to China, but the book makes you feel as if you have. You see daily life at micro scale, and follow the trials and triumphs of the characters.

If you like to have everything laid out in front of you to follow, then this probably isn’t the book for you. The novel is a bit like a puzzle, and I kind of want to go find Mo Zhi Hong and interrogate him about what exactly was happening in certain places.  Questions are left unanswered, but you gain a real insight into Hai Long’s life and the lives of the people around him. The diversity of China (and of people in general) is revealed in the careful layering of stories. Most of the time, you finish a book feeling you’ve met the main character and a few sub-characters. When you finish The Year of the Shanghai Shark, you’ll have met fifteen.

I really liked this book. And I think I’ve used too many metaphors in this review.

Give me some other books set in China! :-)