Urvy becomes a black belt at Origami and Pete achieves 2nd dan at no-can-do!

Konichiwah!

After the hustle and bustle of China, Japan was like a tonic. The moment we arrived at the airport, everyone was very courteous and laid back. When we encouraged an elderly man onto the subway before us (despite 20kg backpacks each), he was so pleased he gave us a sweet when he got off.

The week was spent in Tokyo only – as we were limited with time. We stayed in a lovely hostel where the staff put on a free Halloween party (sadly the day we left), with free food and drinks. Most of the toilets in Japan play a ‘tinkle’ sound while you – er – tinkle to avoid any embarrassment. If you need the toilet seat warming its no problem with the touch of a button, and need a bidet function – decipher the Japanese controls and you’re off!

The main sights in the Tokyo Asakusa area were an ancient shrine dating back around a 1,000 years, The Asahi brewery, and the skytree building (being built) which was a communications tower which was aiming to be the tallest building in Tokyo once completed.

 

While there we also did the 5am visit to the Tsukiji Central fish market, which is the worlds largest fish market – famous for a massive daily auction of sushi and sashimi grade tuna. This tuna is then transported around the world and sold for millions of Yen. There are also numerous exotic fish and seafood sold at the market – which makes it a really interesting visit. Plenty of surrounding restaurants and cafes serve fresh sushi and sashimi for a delicious breakfast – so good we went back a second time.

 

A visit around the Shinjuku area gave us an insight into the glitzy fashion shops and trends worn by the local ‘youth of today’. They dress up like their favourite ‘animee’ characters – think Pokemon but older and real life! The teenagers hair styles were an exaggerated version of Rod Stewart’s mullet circa the 1980’s. A sight to behold.

In order to see views of Mount Fuji we took the ‘Romance car’ – a driver-less train, to a place called Hakone. All the transport was so efficient and clean and if it is late at all the driver gets off and gives the customers a public apology – British rail take note! The day was overcast when we set off, and even worse when we got there. So in order to see the much awaited views, we bought postcards! It is a lovely town and we had a walk around it to the Onsen (traditional Japanese hot springs) with the mountain views as a backdrop. It would have been amazing and relaxing, once you get over the initial shock of being naked in the pools as clothing is not permitted and they are male and female only.

The highlight of the trip was going to a local football match with Uncle David. Not my uncle but that of a friends. He moved from Bolton and has lived there for the last 15 years but you wouldn’t know it. You can take the boy out of Bolton........

David kindly took us to watch Omiya Ardija play. Ardija means squirrel and their mascot is a man in a squirrel costume going around the pitch shaking hands with the fans on a segway. Omiya drew 2-2 and despite the constant rain it was a great match, standing on the terraces with pint in hand – as live matches used to be. True to tradition we went to the pub afterwards and met David’s wife and friends, all of whom were really lovely.

Japan is probably one of our favourite countries of the whole trip. All that sushi eating, using chopsticks and origami folding makes me think i’m turning Japanese, i think I’m turning Japanese – i really think so!

Sayanara for now as we're off to New Zealand eh!

su-shi you all soon Pete and Urvy xxx

China Crisis!

Hello all!


Apologies for the delay in blog installments, the Internet has been a bit more expensive over here than we anticipated. Anyway, after our stop-over in the UK which passed very quickly, we touched down in Beijing for our three weeks in China. After navigating the subway (which did have signs in English contrary to popular belief) we arrived at the hostel which was really nice and only a short walk from Tianaman Square. However, we were a bit worried about the restaurant next door which was proudly serving donkey meat! Some of the other delights on the menu in Beijing included ‘cold pickled chickens feet’, ‘saliva chicken’ and ‘a secret system of pork’. Yum! Fortunately we met a lovely Australian called Holly who spoke some mandarin and helped us decipher the menu, so we just ended up with pecking duck and pancakes.

After a few days mooching around in the thick smog and taking in the Forbidden city which was filled with beautiful pagodas and Tiananmen Square, we made the trip out to see the Great wall at Jinshanling. Fortunately, it was a clear day and the views were fantastic, and we could see the wall snaking across the land for miles. What wasn’t fantastic was the minefield of human faeces and phlegm all over the place! People has told us before about the social habits of China but nothing can quite prepare you for it. Still, we had a nice day even if it had a soundtrack of people hacking up every five minutes. And we saw a reigous bug - a praying mantis.

Arriving back in Beijing we met up with our Belgian friend Seb, who we met earlier in the year at the Cambodian orphanage. Unfortunately, the famous Beijing smog had descended and exploring the Temple of heavenly peace and the Summer Palace were a bit of a write-off, as you couldn’t actually see them until you were about 10 yards away (imagine a very foggy day!). We did have a good time at the art district though which was very interesting and virtually smog free! (well, most of it was in-doors). It was filled with amazing sculptures and also some weird ones with gorilla-man slaves in cages and hobbit type monsters. After all this we were ready to move on and took an overnight train to Xian. However, we found out on the train we had been sold a ticket for Xian south train station, which was about 20km away from the city! Grrrr, Grrrr!

We eventually arrived at our hostel in the pouring rain, which immediately had a power cut. Happy days and wet pants. The hostel turned out to be really nice, even if the weather wasn’t, offering a taster night of local foods and a sauna! Our day at the Terra Cotta warriors was also washed out by torrential rain and also included an incredibly rude petty official who didn’t know the difference between a driving licence and a student ID card!, a lost waterproof cover for our backpack, more people smoking, spitting and using flash photography all over the place despite the notices to the contrary – next to the ancient statues. Sadly we soon realised that the pits were only half full as most of the Warriors had gone to the Expo at Shanghai – also one of our next destinations! Hhowever the weather cleared the next day and we wandered around the Big Goose Pagoda, which was very nice but expensive!

The next stop was Chengdu – famous for the adorable, cuddly, reluctant to mate – pandas. We met a traveller called Mat who got a great shot of the cubs later on. A wonderful day was had despite a 7am start, to see the pandas arise to feed and play. Although they were slow moving they climbed trees and chased each other around the enclosures. We saw the Red and Giant pandas, and baby (giant panda) cubs. It was $140 dollars to hold a cub – so we saved our money and queued to see them twice instead! Plus theres always the gift shop.

We then flew to our final Chinese destination – Shanghai, where we had one of the worst damp hostel rooms of the year so far, so we quickly moved to another one. After a few days spent exploring the city and walking down the famous bund, we visited the Expo along with actually a million other people. The Expo is basically a huge series of pavilions, one from each country in the world explaining a little about their culture. As you could avoid the queue for your own country pavilion by showing your passport, we went to the UK first. If that’s the best of British then I’d hate to see the worst. It was just a cube shaped building made entirely of plastic rods with a seed in each end, called the Seed Cathedral. There were also two rejects from Madame Tausauds; an old palace guard whose face was peeling off and David Beckham- who doesn’t even live in the UK anymore. Wow. The whole thing was dull, grey and pretty lifeless.

However, we also blagged our way into the Ireland pavilion where we then blagged our way into a VIP, John Rocha fashion show with food and booze and goodie bags! After that we sneaked into the Cuba pavilion and queued conventionally for Australia, Cambodia and the UAE, all of which made the UK look embarrassingly poor. Urvy used her smooth talking to beat the queues for the India Pavilion, where we saw a great dancing display and had some lovely curry. It was a long day (13 hours) but very interesting and enjoyable. When we got back we bumped into our friend Holly again who was checking into our Hostel!

The next morning we had a rather hurried journey to the Airport for our flight to Japan, due to the complicated underground system. So all in all China was a mixed bag, some good some, bad and plenty ugly!

Chow (mein) - for now!

Urvy and Pete xxx