Had a tasty dinner…well not really anything spectacular but I’m a cheap person so even the cheapest food would content me~ So I ordered a ????? (not sure how you word it in English…probably shredded pork noodle with mushroom and veggie??) take out from the famous #9 Restaurant in Richmond. Also ordered a Hong Kong style milk tea. So tasty and therefore very happy~ I’m a big fan of the HK style milk tea, I can drink it anytime/day in the year~

Sakuran is a 2007 movie about oiran (Japanese prostitute) in the Edo period. One word to describe the movie would be, colorful! As a color lover, my attention was immediately caught by the vivid colors used throughout the film, and the extravagant kimonos that are worn by all the characters throughout the story. The plot itself is so-so, talks about a little girl Kiyoha (performed by Tsuchiya Anna / ?????) that got her body sold to this Akasen district (red-light district) in Edo, present-day Tokyo, Japan. She got trained ever since she is young to become a high class prostitute. Story also talks about how this guy has made a promise to bring her out out the “scene” since she is young, and at the end of the story he fulfilled it and brought her out to see the world.

It’s the first time seeing Tsuchiya Anna’s performance. I looked her up online and figured that she was actually a model / singer and she hasn’t been performed in a lot of movies. She wasn’t the prettiest out there but she does look unique, having the kind of style that Namie Amuro has, but more rebellious kind of looking. Overall I think her performance in this movie was great and the make up she had really suited her and her kimonos.

Here is an excerpt about the movie from wiki:

A young kamuro (maid in a brothel) is sold into the red-light district Yoshiwara and is put under the care of the oiran of the Tamakiku house, Shouhi, who names her Tomeki. The girl is very rebellious, does not cry when punished, is foul-mouthed and bad-mannered, and talks back and even hits the other kamuro. It is because of this that the more experienced people in the household begin to think that she will be one day a great oiran, since an oiran needs not only beauty and talent, but she should also have the tenacity to maintain the position.

After that, Tomeki becomes O-Rin, a hikkomi (or prostitute-in-training), and later Kiyoha, the most beautiful girl in the Tamakiku household. Her popularity threatens the position of Tamakiku’s oiran Mikumo, which creates great tension and jealousy between the two.

But rivalry is not the main problem to overcome for young Kiyoha, but rather the appearance of young Soujiro and the impossibility of love in these quarters.

Another thing that worth mentioning is the director for the film, Ninagawa Mika / ????. I looked her up as well and realized she is the “most famous photographer in Japan”, pretty awesome. I figured that whoever directed the art for the film must be someone special, and there you go. I really like the colors and patterns used on the cinematic and the costumes. Looks like there is an art book for this film that went on sale, guess I’ll try download it off the net somewhere, might give me some inspirations on my next art work

Overall I think if you are an art person, this is a must watch. Otherwise, it’s still fun to watch for example the lives that these prostitutes had in the old days, even though the storyline is just an average.

Had some cheap but tasty dinner for tonight~ Got the “3 items with rice” take out ($4.75) from the Richmond Public Market with fried squid tentacles, soya sauce chicken, and eggplants. It was huge I was only able to finish maybe 2/3 of it~ I like this place since it’s so cheap yet tasty/huge portion.

Also got my first platinum VISA card from Royal Bank today. The annual fee is waived for the first year, plus I get 15000 RBC Reward Points which is a equivalent of $340 worth of gifts~ Plus all kinds of insurance I believe. It’s kind of pro as I’ve received four separate letters about this card, like thank you letters, PIN code, benefits….etc. I feel like a VIP now for some reason. I’ll check out the benefits later on, now I should go in and check to see if I’ve gotten my 15000 extra points!

Went to Sears at Richmond Centre to return some of the clothes that I bought yesterday (they were all by Nevada) since they were a tad too big - 3 of them were M’s but should’ve gotten S’s. I ended up buying another four and ended up paying $1xx extra…lol. Well I haven’t been buying clothes for myself for quite a while, haven’t even got any of them during they stay in Japan and Korea (well I got some tees but they were more like souvenirs). Anyway I’m pretty happy with the purchase and I’ll keep my receipt in case I feel like returning any of them for no reason.

Had Mcdonald’s for lunch, got a junior chicken meal. Talking about Macdonald’s, I have this weird habbit of looking through the to-go paper bag for left over/dropped out fries after I finished all the fries. I would get this super grateful feeling when I can find one or two fries…would get happier when more fries are found..etc.

Spent the rest of the night uploading my travel pictures to Facebook. After something like 3 hours finally got all the pictures Wendy and I took in Shirahama and Nara uploaded, and descriptions typed~~ I can now go and grab some tasty food/drinks before going to bed.

Time to change my 2.5 years old beddings~ Got a pack of duvet cover/pillow cases and another pack of fitted sheets/pillow cases from Home Outfitters today. I’ve been buying these off Ikea since the past (the really cheap ones), never tried out any of these normal ones. I had a pretty hard time telling apart terms like “fitted sheet”, “flat sheet”, “duvet”, “comforter”, “sham”…etc. since I’ve never bought these stuff before here in Canada (the ones from Ikea were illustrated so I could easily tell what they were for) I hope I’ve gotten the right stuff….I’ll see how they will fit on my queen size bed and if they will match with the rest of my room. If they don’t, return is always an option here in Canada~

Have been spending the whole week last week to organize the 100GB of pictures and videos that I took during the 3-week trip with Wendy. Since I was sick for almost the whole week (still coughing occasionally even now), I just managed to categorize the pictures by dates taken (There were 3 cameras being used, I was trying to put all the files together and re-group). Anyway, the trip to Japan was fun! Better than I thought. Needless to say, we saw/learnt/experienced a lot, and had loads of fun. Trip to Korea was just so so. Jeju island was great, there were lots to see, but Seoul was quite boring (we weren’t able to order any food at any restaurant just because they don’t speak any English). Luckily we had some guidiances there with my Korean friend Boom and Wendy’s friends Sun and Ha, who made our last day of Seoul pretty memoriable

Japan was a totally awesome country. We rented a 1.4L Toyota and driven it for 10 days all over Japan. It was the best decision made since otherwise we would’ve been taking trains and there would have been lots of places that trains wouldn’t go, and we also saved time transferring between trains…etc. (I scratched the rear bumper of the car on the first day when I was trying to park in one of those tiny parking lots in Osaka Luckily the car rental didn’t realize when we returned the car! ) We went to loads of places (scroll back a couple posts for the itinerary, or click here). Personally I love Shirakawa the most because of its really awesome countryside/picturistic feel and the place we stayed at was extremely nice (a house made out of grass/wood) and we had great service and meals there. Kobe city was great as well, very civilized and there were nice looking building everywhere (with great night views at Habourland). Kyoto was amazing. I love how it gave me a feeling of Japanese tradition whereever I went. You can see girls/ladies wearing kimono/yukata everywhere on the street, and the restaurants, gift shops…etc all give you a feeling of the more traditional side of Japan, and their attention to details on everything. Kyoto would probably be my first choices to live in if I get to choose a place. Oh by the way we went to the Fushimi Inari Shrine, which has the most number of Torii gates in Japan! I think they have a couple thousand gates there, some tiny some huge, pretty dramatic.

Koyasan…loads of temples or “Shukubo” (where you can stay overnight). This place is in the middle of nowhere, deeply hidden inside some huge mountain range south to Osaka. This place was exquisite! We got to stay overnight at two of the many temples, tried the monks’ foods (vegetarians), attended their morning ceremony, and wandered around inside the temples and their really nice backgardens (they were huge!) This experience was unforgettable. Shirahama was another place with nice views, seaviews. Nice beaches, nice onsen, nice “Adventureland” (an amusement park/zoo where we spent couple hours at), too bad we didnt get to try out the open air onsen (they were closed the night we were there and the next day we figured we wanted to goto the amusement park instead).

We also went to Nara, and we LOVE THE DEERS! We was at the Nara park which was a really huge park that is full of deers running around waiting for people to feed them. We bought some cookies (for deers) from a stand and we were literally chased by them! These deers were really used to humans and some of them just hit you with their head which is a signal for “I want your cookies!”. There were some less aggresive deers (tinier ones) that we got to pet and took pictures with. Also in Nara were some great/huge temples and one of them (Toudaiji) had the biggest budda statue in Japan. We didnt do much there other than wandering around the Nara park area since the tourist spots seem to be quite centralized there.

Takayama (one stop before Shirakawa) had some great finds too. It was basically a fairly tiny village with a couple streets that have been preserved since a hundred years ago so you could see traditionally built Japanese style houses everywhere. There was also a morning market which sells fresh produce, local speciality foods, and gifts. There was this mascot called “Sarubobo” that caught most of our attention (monkey plushed dolls with many choices of colors), and Wendy and I both bought a couple of them as sourveniers

Last but not least, Osaka! We didnt spent too much time there, bascially just during the first day we went to the Aquarium (biggest in Japan) and we felt rewarded since we saw all kinds of exquisite fishes and sealives that we haven’t seen before. Also went to the Floating Garden Observatory where we had an AWESOME night view of Osaka! The observatory was really nicely built and decorated with black lights and all kinds of arts on the floor, and the floor underneath the top level observatory was another observatory with nice 2-person seats all over the place for couples to make out and have a drink (there was a bar there). This one was enclosed so you can be sure your hair wouldn’t be messed by the strong winds. We were back to Osaka on the last day of the trip where we went to Dotonburi and Shinsaibashi, which was bascially the centre of Osaka. Dotonburi was a pedestrian only area that consists of countless restaurants and bars, where Shinsaibashi was purely for shoppers - endless blocks and blocks of botiques, gift shops, brandnames…etc. We went there fairly late and Wendy didn’t get to unleash her shopaholic power but I think we did scored something there.

That pretty much summarized our trip to Japan. Guess I’ll write about Korea/Jeju island tomorrow…

Oh, check out the amount of gift wraps, tickets, and pamphlets that we got during the trip!

Gift wraps and food wraps:

Pamphlets, stamp books, tickets…etc: