Been back to Vancouver for a couple days, trying to adjust to the time differences/jet lag, have been feeling super tired/lack of energy for the last few days… Also spent time cleaning up the “mess” caused by the kitchen reno… had to rub off a lot of stains on the hardwood floor, lots of vacuuming as the entire living room was covered with dust, also reorganized virtually everything within the living room as now that I lost a huge closet (took over by the fridge), I had to throw away lots of stuff that I had been keeping in the closet..

The last week I spent in Hong Kong was really fun. Wendy and I went to Chime Long in Guang Zhou (China), spent a night at the Chime Long hotel (new year fireworks was visible from the hotel room!), watched a circus show, visited a really huge zoo, and had fun at a world-class amusement park (with some really crazy roller coasters!) It was really a trip packed with fun, and it wasn’t too expensive as well. Other than that we went to a few places that we’ve never been to in Hong Kong, like Sheung Wan, and Tai O. In Sheung Wan there were a lot of old historical buildings (people still living in there) and I took lots of pictures; at Tai O (at the Lantau island, 2-hour ferry ride from Hong Kong) we walked around the area on foot, it was really interesting as life style there was really simple and people that were living there were really slow paced and chill. Lots of great photo opportunities as well. The entire area was next to the water, most of the homes were floating homes that were built on top of some wooden poles and platforms. We saw some interesting street vendors selling preserved fish, guts, and other dried stuff..also some local snacks like the 雞蛋仔 (lined up at a booth for half an hour to get it) and 天癸汁 (tasted like plum juice..quite refreshing).

I don’t feel like working at all….:( but there’s no choice.

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:

Was reading some reviews on my camera today and realized I haven’t really done a formal introduction of it like how I did it for my last couple cams like Canon SD1000, Canon G9, Fujifilm F50fd. Bought this camera about a little more than a month ago off Futureshop, with a staff discount from Peter who works at Best Buy, ended up paying just $355+tax for it, including one lens. Super amazing deal. It’s named “World’s Smallest DSLR”, which is one of the reasons getting it as it’s no fun hauling bulky cameras around. And as usual I fell in love with the camera since day one not just because it’s new but it is also my first ever DSLR camera. I’ve been wanting one forever, have been wanting to get the Canon Rebel XTi about a year and half ago, but wasn’t able to afford it back then. This Olympus turned out to be so affordable so I decided to get it without second thought. The pic is the camera itself, with a flash attached that I got free from Peter.

Also there is the $119 tripod (on sale from $149, lol) that I got 2 weeks ago, the Manfrotto 728B made in Italy. I decided to pay a bit more to get a brand name just to make sure I get an OK quality and sturdy one, so I can keep it for a long time. I love this camera, have already taken thousands of pictures with it in the past month, and liking every single one of them. I’m looking forward to bring it with me to the San Diego one-week trip next week, and take tons of pictures at Legoland and the San Diego Zoo