Return from the Asian Vacasian

So I've been back in my home country for a few days now and finally got up the energy to post about my amazing trip to Asia with Jenny. It was incredible.

The first stop was Japan. My first impression was of how clean the area outside Narita airport was. Japan in general was probably the cleanest place I've been my entire life. On the first full day, we drove to Kamakura where we visited the 12th-century Shinto shrine of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, shopped and sampled bean cakes and pickles on Komachi street, and gaped at the 37-foot Great Buddha statue. Our next stop was Odawara Castle, the inside of which had been converted to a museum of relics from the samurai era. We ended the day in Atami, where we stayed in an onsen resort that was the highlight of the Japan tour. The hotel was designed like a traditional Japanese room, complete with tatami mats and rice paper screens, and we slept on the floor. Both Jen and I were a little reluctant at first to get naked iin front of these people we had to sit on a tour bus with the whole next day, but we did, and we liked it so much we went back the in early next morning. The onsen was really cool; they had outdoor and indoor baths, and I particularly liked the one full of floating rose petals. Dinner that night was a traditional banquet-style affair where we wore yukata and sat in long rows on the floor. The meal culminated in karaoke, which was awkward since the guide insisted upon my singing and I chose Basketcase by Green Day having completely forgotten that I would have to sing "I went to a whore" in front of a bunch of Asian-American parents. haha.

The next day we drove to Fuji-Hakone National Park, which was kind of a bummer because of the weather. On a clear day we would have been able to capture specatacular views of Mt. Fuji, and take a boat out onto Lake Ashii, but on that day the fog was so thick we could barely see twenty feet in front of us. We went up to the Yellowstone-esque Owakudani Valley, where the sulfur and steam made the whole place look beautiful but smell like rotten eggs. We ate the legendary eggs boiled in sulfur, which turns the shell black, and supposedly added seven years to our life spans. We also took the Hakone cable car for the "view," but could really only see the ground immediately beneath us throught the horrible fog. At last we went to Tokyo, and stayed in the Shinjuku district. We discovered that Japanese malls are equally as overpriced as American ones, we explored the brightly lit and club-stacked "midtown" where the fun's at; and found an EXCELLENT ramen place where no one spoke English at all, not even the menu. Completely at the mercy of our intuition, we ended up ordering the best meal we ate the whole trip. IT WAS SO GOOD.

We explored more of Tokyo the following day. We went to the Government Office, which supposedly had views but I just bought a bunch of stuff for my friends and a Totoro plushie for myself. Next came the Meiji Shrine, which was gorgeous -- I love the old Japanese architecture so much. They were selling all these charms at the shrine, including "A Charm For Passing An Entrance Exam," which I thought was hilarious. Then Akasuka, for more temples and a LOT of streetside shopping, and the Imperial Palace, situated by a beautiful bridge. We hit up Ginza, the expensive shopping district where we bought nothing but enjoyed the huge Sony store. Last came Rinkai Fukutoshin, a recently-built entertainment area. We checked out the futuristic Toyota showcase, ate hot pot, and watched an AMAZING sunset over Rainbow Bridge. I wish we’d had more time there to check out the SEGA Joyopolis, the trendy shopping, and the store called “Condomania,” but all the more reason to go back.

The next day we flew to Shanghai and met up with Jen’s college buddy, Sun, who’s been living there for a year working as a designer. His dog is the cutest, most hyperactive thing in existence. He took us out to meet his friends for dinner and then drinks on the roof of this bar where we could see the riverfront skyline. Shanghai is a beautiful city in a very different way from Tokyo. People talk about China as a “developing” country, and I felt it here in the most literal sense; there were huge skyscrapers being constructed everywhere you turn, including what will be the tallest building in the world when completed.

Our China tour was very different from our Japan tour. The tour guide was young and much less like a mother, and the group consisted of only seven people. This was kind of annoying for a relatively long tour, because every meal was eaten family-style in a private room, so we had to be social, and one of the men was super annoying. It’s hard to explain his obnoxiousness adequately, but he drove us nuts. His 13-year-old son was really cool though, and turned out to be a pretty big fan of both Bleach and Naruto. We both realized we get along better with 13-year-old boys than with our fellow “adults.” Haha.

Day one of touring was all Shanghai. I love the architecture there – the skyline is fantastic. We drove through some of the main parts of town, hung out in Century Park, checked out Xintian Di (juxtaposing historical buildings with a rich foreigner coffee shop district), and shopped on Nanjing Street. At night we flew to Huangshan, where we would spend the next few days.

On our way to Huangshan, mountain we went to Hongcun, the ancient Hui-style village village where Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed. It was really hot there, but it cooled off when we got up to the mountains. Huangshan is full of amazing scenery, with names like Beginning to Believe Peak. The fog was thick but incredibly fluid, and kept revealing and covering different parts of the mountains such that you could photograph the same thing within five minutes and it would look totally different. It looked like one of those monochrome ink paintings. We hiked around there to various viewpoints, up steep and winding stairs. It was definitely a highlight of the trip, and we stayed overnight in a hotel at the top of the mountain. More hiking the next day, and I was grateful for the more tolerable temperatures.

When we drove down to Hangzhou, an ancient city that has turned into a tourist mecca, I realized how much I hate heat. Ugh was it ever hot. But it was very beautiful, home to West Lake, which is full of tiny islands with temples on them. We took a self-described “gaily painted pleasure boat” to several of these islands, hearing stories about the various legendary spots in the area. We went to the Grotto of Peak Flying From Afar, a cave full of carved Buddhas, many of which had had their faces smashed during the Cultural Revolution, and to the magnificent Ling Yin Temple.

Next came the water town of Wuzhen and the city of Suzhou, which hosted amazing craft workshops. We went to an Embroidery Research Center (way cooler than it sounds), and a silk factory and watched the workers separate silk from the worms and spin it into beautiful quilts, which we bought for our parents. WE also saw the ancient Tiger Hill Pagoda, China’s Leaning Tower of Pisa, which is probably going to fall down at some point and surrounded by other cultural relics with legends behind them. The Lingering Garden was lovely, one of the most famous in the country.

Returning to Shanghai, we met up with Sun again and revisited the Bund and Nanjing Street by night, bought cheap music, had a delicious dinner and went to karaoke. It’s all private lounges there, which is much more fun because we can make fools of ourselves without embarrassment. XD

Jenny’s grandparents and uncle picked us up when we landed in Taiwan, our final stop. They took us to a temple and a traditional craft center, a hospital (boring, I know…it’s complicated), and a delicious restaurant in Taichung, where they live. They also took us to the museum of natural history that Jen frequented as a kid. They had an awesome newish hi-tech interactive exhibit on the human life cycle that was probably the best museum installation I’d ever seen, as well as the old school animatronic dinosaurs that made Jen all nostalgic. Her grandparents are so sweet, and kept insisting on buying stuff for us. And for some reason, the Taiwanese cuisine was my favorite I tasted. I even liked the Taiwanese take on Shanghai food, which we ate at the bequest of Jen’s grandpa, better than the real thing.

After two and a half days in Taichung, we joined Jen’s family friends in the awesome city of Taipei. This family is the coolest family ever. The father is a sitcom writer, the mother runs her own spa, listens to pop music, and looks like she’s 20, and the kid Eric is our age and has got the most adorable sense of quiet dry sarcasm. For dinner we went to the night market, where blocks and blocks of street vendors had all kinds of food for sale. It was very hot and crowded with young people – apparently the night market scene is kind of a big deal. The next day we went to the National Palace Museum, where most of China’s great artifacts came to reside to protect them during the Cultural Revolution. It was awesome. Then we went to the biggest bookstore I’d ever seen, and to Taipei 101, the tallest finished building in the world. It was pretty cool – the night views are stunning, and I love the design. This trip turned me into an architecture geek, which I had almost no interest in before. That night we went to a jazz club, which was kind of a cultural disjunction but really fun. Our final day in Taipei we ate donuts dipped in soymilk and went shopping for $3 Engrish T-shirts. We bought so much we were feeling a bit of buyers’ remorse at first, but when we actually got home and tried on our stuff, we both wished we had bought more! It was the perfect way to cap off our trip.

That's the short version. Without pictures. Because facing 1000 pictures is kind of overwhelming, really, and I'm lazy, and everyone who reads this has seen them and heard the stories firsthand anyway. It's just for the record, and because when I'm explaining things to you the first time I didn't have any of the names on me (thank you, pdf itinerary!).