around the world at The Observer's Log

Posts Tagged ‘around the world’

Things seen along the way

30 Jun 2005

As we”ve moved along over this journey, I”ve taken pictures of things for posting to the blog. Some of them didn”t make it, for one reason or another. But hating to waste good pictures, I thought I”d throw them into a blog posting for all to experience.

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Home again, home again, jiggity-jig

20 Jun 2005

Um… someone stop the world, please? I wanna get off.

Wow.

The world is a lot bigger than one would expect. Sure, Disney says it’’s a “Small, Small World“, but trying going around it sometime. And I don”t mean by plane — go around it by surface. It takes a lot longer, and you”ll see a lot more.

Biggest surprise in the whole trip? Reverse culture shock. Didn”t see that coming, I tell ya. After seven weeks of blocking out all other languages to concentrate on the rare blips of English (signage and speech), arriving in San Francisco about overloaded me. Ouch.

The Bow River is flooding. The main highway was renamed. And those are the only two things we knew about on the road. Adjusting back is going to take some time…

The Last

20 Jun 2005

Yesterday was a day of lasts.

The last train (finally, even if it was just an airport tram; I was thwarted from taking the airport express train by a completely bulletproof argument put forth by Amy that the bus was faster).

The last flight.

The last airport.

The last country.

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The view in Osaka

18 Jun 2005

Nothing like a little wandering around to make things interesting.

I’ve been to Osaka once before — a few hours last year, when Jen and I came here. Mostly to see the Aquarium, mind you, but we did see a few other things.

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Nara is neat

18 Jun 2005

The last time I was in Japan (a little over a year ago), I’d wanted to go to Nara. I’d quite a bit about it, but just hadn’t gotten the chance to go. So when we planned this out, and happened to be spinning through Japan on our way home, it was a very fortunate happenstance that both of us wanted to be there.

Nara, as it turns out, is a very neat little city. Make no mistake, this is most definitely no town. But it doesn’t feel large. At least, if you’re within the “walled” portion. (I’m not sure if there’s an actual wall, but that’s what it looks like on the maps we’ve seen.)

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Wandering around Tokyo

15 Jun 2005

Tokyo is a wonderful city. Even in the rain. Despite a delayed start (we were up late — it doesn”t help that Chris and I yak a lot), we soon found ourselves in Ginza, walking through the mist-like rain in search of not much except yarn (Amy’’s got a project she’’s trying to finish).

We went through the sweet electronic sanctity of the Sony Showroom [insert drool marks on the screen here], then over to the Apple store (four floors of pure industrial design nirvana), before crossing Ginza dori in search of, well, food. Amy spied a small sign that led us down an alley barely wide enough for us to walk, then down a set of barely-marked stairs into a basement restaurant that served some darn fine raumen, and some pretty funky dumplings.

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Our first plane ride in a month

15 Jun 2005

We left the hotel early this morning — before 7:00 am — to catch a train to the airport. Strangely fitting that our last train would be to our first plane in quite some time.

Chek Lap Kok airport was designed with an express train in mind, which is great considering how far out the airport is from Hong Kong Island. The train system (the Aiport Express) also lets you check in at the train station, so you don’t have to check in at the airport.

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Ohio, Nippon!

14 Jun 2005

Last country. Almost home.

Being in Japan, actually, is almost like being home. This country is so familiar to me (well, certainly Yotsukaido, Chiba, and Tokyo) that I didn”t actually notice getting off the plane, going through immigration, getting the bags, getting on a train, finding Chris, and getting to his apartment. I think I might actually have been here too much…

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A side-trip to Macau

13 Jun 2005

One last thing we needed to do before we leave the Hong Kong area was check out Hong Kong’s forgotten half-sister, Macau. Macau was founded a couple hundred years earlier than Hong Kong by the Portuguese, and was originally the heavy weight title holder of foreign trading port until the British dethroned it with, shall we say, some less-than gentlemanly behaviour to get their way (I refer to the events leading up to the Treaty of Nanking).

Getting from Hong Kong to Macau is a fairly simple process: you either go overland (through China, which we can’t do since we’ve officially left China and don’t have a multiple-entry visa), or you take a ferry. While Macau might be Hong Kong’s forgotten half-sister, they seem to have a pretty solid relationship, especially now since they’ve both returned to the stewardship of China. The ferry service is perfectly representative of this — they run every 15 minutes.

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Amy’s ready to kill me, I swear…

12 Jun 2005

I complain a lot.

Unintentionally, I swear, but I do.

(Amy says I like to complain, but I actually hate it. I don”t even realize I”m complaining until I complain. I complain to myself that I complain, and get stuck in a vicious cycle of complaint. But I digress…)

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