Asian Express

Sorry for the negligence. I'm back. Back in Sapporo. Back from what or where? Well, a trip. Or rather, a journey. Yeah. Journey sounds more grand. Let's stick with that. This journey began on the 28th of February, 2007, and ended exactly three weeks later, 21st of March. Not even arguably, undeniably one of the best journeys of my life.
This enormous excursion included strange and wonderful coincidences, new acquaintances, old friends, good luck, bad luck, beautiful scenery and of course even more beautiful women, as I navigated my way through various Japanese cities, and ended up in Hong Kong. The trip was as excellent as it was eventually emotionally draining. As shallow as my plunge might have been, for two weeks I submerged into Japanese culture and art in its past and present forms very intensively, accompanied by my friend from Finland, Kenttu. Thanks, it was fun, YM4E.
Having slept around 0 hours the previous night, I stumbled on to the Skymark flight bound for Tokyo. The morning was cold, bright and beautiful, a nice way to start a journey. As I was trying to find my seat, I was greeted by a bright smile and a handwave. It was my friend Kaori. A nice coincidence. But the funny thing was that my seat was next to hers. Now that's a coincidence. Because of this funny coincidence we hung out in Tokyo after Kaori's job interviews had ended. The location was Shibuya, one of the busiest districts of Tokyo, but somehow we managed to find each other in the sea of people. After hanging out with Kaori, I returned to the Tokyo Station, where I met a boy from the States, looking for a job as an English teacher, and a Japanese girl, who was very interested in especially Finnish design. So, while waiting for the nightbus from Tokyo to Nagoya, I got a free lesson in Japanese oral communication, as the girl talked almost nonstop for 2,5 hours about Finnish design and Japanese design and styles and anything even loosely related to the topic. After that, I met a guy sitting next to me on the bus, Takayuki, who had been in Tokyo for job interviews, like many other soon-to-graduate-Japanese. More Japanese practice, and English as well, since Taka had been in Spain as an exchange student, and could speak better Japanese than most young Japanese can. On that note, Kaori speaks excellent English, the best English speaker among any of the Japanese people I've met. She did one year of exchange in the States, which of course contributes to her proficiency to great extent. Sry, straying...
I met my friend Kenttu at Nagoya airport, or Centrair, or something like that. The airport is built on an artificial island. Cool. For that day in Nagoya, we were joined by Suvi and Tessi, two Finnish girls who my friend had met on the flight. While the girs were resting in their hotel room, we went to check out Nagoya castle. The castle was beautiful on the outside, but it had been rebuilt in the 1950s after it had been bombed to the ground during WWII, like most Japanese castles, so there was nothing original looking or really interesting inside, except if u consider an elevator in a medieval castle to be interesting.
After another nightbus ride, we were in Tokyo, again. The first day was basically resting after a bad night's sleep, and visiting Shibuya for some shopping. Tokyo is nice, and busy. Always. There's hardly a place where u can feel isolated or alone in that monster of a metropolis. The city is just a massive concrete jungle, spreading everywhere until it is stopped by the sea or the mountains. You can find anything in this city, from old, earth-tone temples to massive, metallic, shiny skyscrapers; from rockabilly people to goths or anime characters; from fresh food markets to vending machines serving noodles. For games, electronics, or manga cafés, just take the Yamanote Line to Akihabara, the electric town. If you want to do some garment shopping, almost regardless of your taste, or if you just want to see interesting looking Tokyoites, just go to Harajuku. In the mysterious case that you find you haven't seen enough people while in Tokyo, go to Shibuya and witness the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world, right in front of Shibuya station. You just have to see it to believe it. Like any guidebook would tell you, for entertainment and nightlife, hit the streets of Roppongi Hills, but don't be surprised if you won't see that many locals there. After staying three nights, and hanging out for a day with my Alaskan friend Will, we left Tokyo and headed for Kansai area.
In Kyoto, we stayed at a very nice youth hostel, five minutes on foot from the main station. The bad part was that check-in was at 16.00, and we arrived in Kyoto around 10.00..On top of that, the whole night train trip from Tokyo on the slowest possible local trains turned out to be a not very good idea. We didnt have any seats on the overnight-8-hour-trip..so we basically rested by sitting on our backpacks, while the train seemed to be spending more time on every little station, rather than actually getting us somewhere. In any case, being too tired to enjoy any actual sightseeing in the morning, we checked out only one world heritage site (there arent many sites in kyoto that Aren't world heritage sites), and spent the rest of the waiting time by sleeping at the station and some parks. In fact we continued to do personal maintenance for the rest of the day, doing laundry, bathing and just taking it easy.
Kyoto is a very nice and peaceful city, home to about 1,4 million people. The former capital of Japan was the capital of "peace and tranquility" and it still continues to live up to that name. Buddhist and Shintoo temples are scattered in and around the city and the surrounding hills. A little bit to the South of Kyoto, lies Nara, an old centre of power itself, home to arguably most famous temple in Japan; the Todaiji, or "Great Eastern Temple". In the middle of the massive temple complex, you can find the largest wooden structure in the world, the Daibutsuden, which houses a massive statue of Buddha. While in Kyoto, places worthwile visiting are especially the Golden Pavilion (kinkakuji) and Kyomizudera.
After getting an overdose of temples (reminding me of the time we got really sick of churches in Rome and Venice, Italy), we hopped on the train towards Himeji, a city that got it's name from the beautiful castle that lies in the middle of it. Himeji is one of the rare Japanese fortresses that have survived the mayhem of WWII. The castle is truly a thing of beauty, with every little detail designed and honed to perfection. The beauty of Himeji is matched with it's ingenuity and lethality; the beautiful white walls lead intruders to mazes of cul-de-sacs and various machiavellian defence contraptions. Walking through the gates and the yards, it is no wonder this castle was never conquered by enemies - you feel bad even thinking about the poor samurais trying to do so.After succesfully navigating our way through the labyrinth-like Himeji in about 2hours, we hopped on the next train to Hiroshima.
The next morning, waking up at J-hoppers Hostel in Hiroshima, we headed out to see the A-bomb dome and museum. A lot of the world leaders have visited this site in the recent history, but i fear that the current ones are forgetting what a weapon of mass destruction can really do. It's sad. Just as sad as nazis and the holocaust, the Red Khmer, or any other genocidal piece of history. The a-bomb just does it a little quicker, but the result is just as sad. Anyone feeling bad about their lives can visit places like this that stand as a testament to human suffering, and get a reality check. So, apperciate what you have, people.
On a more positive note, Hiroshima has risen from the ashes like a phoenix, and is today a very positive, energetic, prosperous and beautiful city of about 2 million people. On the other hand, the Hiroshima card has been played by the Japanese government too much for making the Japanese people seem like victims of WWII, while completely ignoring their own atrocities against many peoples during the war.
But let's not talk politics and bs anymore.
Hiroshima's other recommendable piece of history that is very worthwile to get to know is the Itsukushima shrine, located on Miyajima Island. One of the best three views of Japan, the shrine is famous for the massive red torii, a gate, in the sea in front of the shrine. The mountaneus little island and the shrine are very beautiful, but I recommend you to synchronize your visit with the high tide, if you want to see the shrine at it's most beautiful.
The same day as we visited the most memorable sites of Hiroshima, we got on a bullet train bound for Hakata/Fukuoka, and we arrived on the capital of Kyushu Island a couple of hours later. Bullet trains are fast. Really fast.
The last part of the trip was just about taking it easy after almost two weeks of trains and city hopping. We even took our own hotel room. Luxury. The same night we met Yama-san and his friend, also Yama-san. I got acquainted to Yama through my oral communication teacher, Honma-sensei, as she found out i was going to go all the way to Fukuoka on my Japanese excursion. As it turned out, we were of the same age, which always makes it easier, especially since we mostly spoke in Japanese. So, no need for humble or honorific expressions. We had a nice evening of drinking, and since Yama's friend could speak a little English, all four of us could communicate rather easily. The beer probably helped a little, too.
The following day we went through downtown fukuoka, and walked a couple of hours to the other side of the city, the seaside, got up on the 30something floor of the SeaHawk Hotel and got a really beautiful (free) view of the city.
The last day of ther trip was just about getting back to Kansai, and we did it in style, with the bullet train, again. I said thanks and bye to Kenttu as I got of the train in Kyoto. It was fun. Good memories and a ton of pics.
However, as Kenttu went back to Nagoya to wait for his flight back to Finland, my excursion was only 2/3 done.
The following day I visited Osaka, and got a glimpse of the town by going around on foot for a few hours. I didn't see much, but Osaka seems very nice, active, big city. One of the biggest cities of Japan, Osaka is an important commercial centre, a port city of 2,5 million people, famous for the Osaka Tigers baseball team, the Osaka-jo castle, and it's entertainment district Namba.
After returning for the last night in Kyoto, I felt the travel fever rising again. It's weird to have travel fever while traveling, but then again, I was about to go to a different country and a location far away from where i was now, so I guess it's natural to have a few butterflies in the stomach. This blog is never going to end...

On the morning of March 14th, I flew to Hong Kong on India Airlines. Cheap airliner, but good food and service.
On arrival to Hong Kong, the humidity sucked the lifeforce out of me..23 degrees celsius, and like a greenhouse. Never experienced climate like that. It took me a few days to get used to it; feeling sticky and dirty and sweating constantly.
I met my beautiful friend Colina the same night i arrived, at 22. The sweetest, cutest, and funniest girl in Hong Kong, if you ask me. I was a little nervous about meeting her, wondering how well we would get along after only chatting and skyping before. Luckily, all the nervousness disappeared the moment we met, and we had a nice dinner, Shanghai cuisine. The heat really kills your appetite, but the food was good, nevertheless. It was a very cool first encounter with this beautiful being.
The following day, I went to walk around the city on the Hong Kong Island side, as I was staying at Causeway Bay. The humidity really made the walking uncomfortable, as I was sweating like a pig, but the I really enjoyed the interesting sights, and got some really nice flicks of the interesting architecture and infrastructure of Hong Kong. In the evening we had some thai food with Colina and her friends. I also met her best friend Hazel that night, a very nice person herself. After dinner, we went clubbing. Me and three cute Hong Kong girls going clubbing? I had no objections. The club was too packed, we had to wait for the drinks forever, and there was no room to dance, but it was fun anyway.
Next day, it was the Cat st. antique shops and Man Mo Temple. Cat street antique shops are full of various interesting items, but they are mainly for rich western tourists, and often not very authentic nor very old. However, for wonderful socialist paraphenalia and collectibles of the great chairman Mao, this is a good place to check out. A good measure of contrast to the Japanese temples i had visited during the past couple of weeks was provided by Man Mo Temple, a more typical Chinese temple, made of concrete, coloured with bright green, gold and red, and filled with incense smoke. That night, we ate really good Indian food. Delicious. The weird part was following these indian guys through a crowd of various nationalities trying to pull us to their restaurants, arriving at an elevator, going up to a shady apartement building, and knocking on some doors to find a restaurant. But the food was excellent, so it's all good.
The following day we visited Lamma Island, 30 minutes by ferry from Hong Kong Central. Lamma Island is a beautiful little island known for it's seafood and tranquility. A nice little, fairly international, community in which everyone seems to own a dog. A nice place to consider living in for a while. The salad was really good, fresh. Nice.
One of the many highlights of the trip was the Big Buddha on Lantau Island. The tallest seated outdoor Buddha in the world, the Tian Tan Buddha stands at 34 meters high, weighs in around 250 tons, and can be seen even as far as Macau on a clear day. The beautiful statue is located near Po Lin monastery, standing as a representation of the harmonious relationship between man and nature, people and religion.
The final night (sigh) in Hong Kong was beautiful. We visited Victoria Peak, and got a beautiful nightview of the city (if you don't believe me, check the pictures). A very romantic spot, I can recommend this to all you lovers out there. But don't worry, the view provides enough beauty to enjoy even if you happen to go solo. Enough of the joking, though. As nice as the view and spot was, I couldn't stop the blues creeping up on me as I realised this is the last night of my grand journey. Enhancing the feeling was the fact that I had an amazing week in Hong Kong thanks to the wonderful guidance and company provided by Miss Tang.
The following morning, as I was sitting on the airplane heading towards Japan, I felt bittersweet; on one hand I had an amazing three week trip, crowned by the last week in Hong Kong, and i felt satisfied by that, but on the other hand, it was very hard leaving Hong Kong after such a great week. It ain't easy.
So, as I walked out of the Sapporo JR Station and looked at the sky, once again breathing the fresh Hokkaido air, I realized my journey had come to an end, and I was home. The first few days after an emotionally draining excursion like that are always the hardest. Slowly but surely, however, I recovered and got back into my homely routines. That was one good trip. I apologize once again for being too lazy to convert it into a blog in time, but here it is now. I take my hat off for anyone who actually reads this from the beginning to the end. Peace.

ps. the picks are on my flickr site (www.bloggingdesmond.blogspot.com), just click on the Some Photos link on this page;) word to your mother.