It’s Xmas Day…feels like it’s the end of the year. I can’t even remember what I did on the same day last year…. I spent half of the day today trying to sell off my two extra X Japan concert tickets off Ebay, craigslist, and a couple other Hong Kong forums, hopefully can get rid of them soon. Last night (24th) I went to Alice’s place for some Xmas food: lamb chop, Greek salad, cream puff dessert, chips, wine….etc. and played a lot with Brandy (dog) and got both of my hands super wet from his saliva. I didn’t take any pictures but I do have some that I took on the 20th - same place but a different party with her friends:

Going to go for another Xmas dinner tonight with Benny and his friends in Downtown Vancouver. Tomorrow I might goto Futureshop to get this $14.99 Microsoft wireless laptop mouse for my Boxing Day gift…hopefully I won’t have to line up or anything.

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~

So busy packing up. Flight is 6am tomorrow, and I still haven’t gotten everything packed up. My first stop will be Hong Kong, will probably go to Macau with family, meet up with a couple friends, then off to Japan and Korea! So stoked can’t wait. Didn’t have a chance to plan it all out for Japan and Korea, guess I’ll rely on my trusty Frommer’s. So nervous, have a feeling that I’ll be forgetting to bring some stuff It’ll be fun to travel with my love love Wendy though

NOOOOOOOOO….

The sale for the tickets to the X Japan concert 22nd November in Paris was DELAYED. I can’t accept this. What if I don’t get to see them again. What if Yoshiki’s neck problem worsen (please don’t). Just let me see you guys once, once is enough (twice is better, and so on). Anyway I’ll be constantly checking the news on X’s official website to see when is the tickets for the show in Paris is going to be on sale.

Also heard that they are going to have a crazy huge show in Hong Kong sometime next year. No clue if I’ll be able to get a ticket to the show, probably will be fairly difficult for me, but I’ll try.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to X Japanese’s latest song “I.V.” they made after their reunion last year. It’s also one of the theme songs for the movie SAW IV.

Have been SUPER busy planning my trip with Wendy to Japan and Korea (in about 3 weeks). SUPER time consuming, have been browsing through 9000 sites to look for travel guides, spent 8000 hours on Google Map Japan. Last time doing something similar would be 3 years ago when I went to Greece, I think I spent 1.5 month, couple hours a day, just to plan for the 3-week trip to Greece and Turkey. It was well worth it though. Somehow it’s much harder to plan stuff for Japan, maybe because of the language barrier (even though I know Japanese though not super fluent), also because of that Japan is extremely huge, cities like Osaka, Kyoto, are enormous and I basically have to study the maps, study the recommended tourist spots, see what’s worth seeing/doing…etc, and plan our accommodations around those spots. It TAKES time….>< and since Wendy is busy at work I'm all doing it by myself, even though it is fun, it's tedious. Hopefully the trip will turn out great after all this preparation (about 50% done now). I've spent the past week trying to secure all our accommodations by reserving online, and apparently I'm kind of late in doing this since at some of the busy cities like Jeju island in South Korea already have most of the hotels fully booked for our days...also some Japanese Ryokans (Japanese homestay / temple-stay) can only be booked by fax or telephone meaning I might have to call long distance and speak some Japanese, lol.

Anyway, here is a brief look of my itinerary:
Sept
13 - 18: Hong Kong, visit family, might goto Macau to see the newly built casino resorts
19: Fly to Beijing to meet with Wendy, then off to Osaka, Japan
20: Osaka - Shopping, goto aquarium (world’s biggest or something)
21: Koyasan - going to stay at some temple Ryokan!
22: Koyasan 2nd day
23: Shirahama - Outdoor open-air onsen! (hotspring)
24: Nara - Japanese’s ancient city
25: Nara/Kobe - Kobe looks fun. See this city guide
26: Kobe
27: Kyoto - one of the most well known cities. LOTS of temples
28: Takayama - a small town in the Gifu prefecture that has really cute looking farm house that were built long ago
29: Shirakawa - similar to Takayama. We’ll get to stay at some minshuku (Japanese homestay), going to be fun!
30: Osaka - back to Osaka, maybe do some shopping then off to South Korea tomorrow
Oct
1: Seoul - South Korea’s capital. Going to meet with my Korean friend Boom probably.
2: Jeju - popular island south to Korea. Lots of great spots for sight seeing. Going to rent a car.
3: Jeju
4: Seoul
5: Back to Beijing -> Vancouver

Schedule is really tight, especially in South Korea. Not sure how it’ll turn out, but there are LOTS to see so I’ll make sure I have my new camera all equipped and ready to go.

Oh I also got an International Driver’s License today at BCAA. Costs $15 and 2 passport pictures. Not too bad I guess, which will allow me to rent a car in Korea.

Kelvin (one of my old high school friends) was here sleeping over at my place last night. He was coming from Hong Kong, stopping by Vancouver, then head to Calgary for some businesses deals. I got off work earlier so I could meet him up and show him around. I brought him to Aberdeen Centre, and a couple other Asian malls. I was going to eat at a bubble tea place with him but it was so packed with teenagers so we didn’t bother and ended up driving all the way to downtown. It was quite cold at night but since we had to search for food we walked alone Robson street from head to toe. We ended up settle down at Earls, due to the farily attractive menu and relatively low price…lol.. The place was nice, waitresses are…hot…lol. I think we ordered a pizza, a pasta, and some “dried cripy ribs”. The food was awesome, very tasty actually.

Played some darts at home with my dart board that was otherwise covered in dirt. It was quite fun, as Kelvin apparently knows it better than I do. We had some chats, played some fighting games on the PS2 and went to bed…seperately. I guess having some guest over kinda lightenS up the otherwise dead atmosphere in my house. Not that I hate living alone but it’s indeed kind of cool to be able to interact with someone during the course of the day. @_@