2024 Ruth and Rik's Adventure in China and Japan

In Spring, 2023, Rik and I started planning a trip to Egypt with our friends Tatiana and Aaron. Then things blew up in the Middle East.  (I think the leaders in that area have a death wish. I do not.) So…plans have changed! The Far East is our new destination. On Wednesday morning, we will be leaving for a tour of China and Japan!  Here's a map of our rough path. Barring any unforeseen delays, we will be hopping from Freddy to Montreal, then to Toronto, and finally to Tokyo. After a 13-hour flight, and a 12 hour time change, we’ll land in Tokyo on Thursday afternoon.  This trip has required more planning than any we’ve done so far.  We had to travel to Montreal with forms up the wazoo to get our entry visa for China.  I got an eSIM from Hong Kong, and I downloaded Alipay and WeChat to make payments.  I hope I'm prepared.  It seems like a lot of work to be a tourist in China.  But it will be a grand adventure so, all good.  Our friends left a ...

Konnichiwa!   We landed in Tokyo at 3:30pm.  Our flight was uneventful except for the cranky baby.  We got a little sleep but not much and with the 12-hour time change, it feels like 3:30am.   So, here’s a puzzler:  if we leave Toronto at 3:30pm and we land in Tokyo at 3:30pm, did the plane go anywhere or did it just stay in the air while the earth turned?  It took a long time to get through Immigration; then we checked our bags at a storage place at the airport and got a cab to the hotel.  They use credit cards here so no fussing with QR codes to pay.  One tip: don’t touch the car doors.  They open  and close on their own.  No English was spoken but it all worked out. Before our trip, I figured after 12+ hours in the air, we'd be ready for sleep, so I booked us a hotel very close to the Haneda airport: the Kawasaki King Skyfront Tokyu Rei . It’s a delightful hotel and it might be the best one we experience so I’m enjoying it. ...

It feels surreal to wake up and be in Tokyo. We had a great sleep - our hotel was very quiet and had blackout blinds. We woke up all ready for a big morning excursion.  First up: breakfast. The restaurant buffet gave us ample opportunity to try new food. I started with what looked like shredded salad.  Rik got some fresh, sliced fruit, and a juice drink that tasted like a vinegary pomegranate.   I tried a round, blobby thing made of bean paste. It looked disgusting but tasted pretty good.  I had some boiled fish, watery eggs, and small slices of rare steak. They had miso soup and fermented soy options (pass). My favourite thing was a little jiggly cake this  area of Kawasaki is proud of called Sumiyoshi.    Last night  we asked the checker-inner to arrange a cab for us to Shibuya this morning. He looked at us out of exasperation and said “no”. He explained that they had a free shuttle to the train station (the subtext was “what kind of fool are yo...

Today we visited the Great Wall of China.  (I  am making the post from Tower 9 of The Great Wall . Rik went ahead while I rest my ankle.) The wall stretches 8850km  from East Sea to the West in the desert.  It took about 2000 years to build and half the workers were killed along the way.  It reminds me of one of those  Heritage Minutes  about the one dead Chinese man for every mile of the railway in Canada. Same with The Great Wall!  (Incidentally, the workers who were still alive kept building the wall around the ones who dropped dead.  If they had stopped for a funeral each time a worker died, they'd still be building it.) During the hundreds and hundreds of years that the Chinese emperors kept building, I wonder if any of them were thinking "Mamma Mia.  someone will surely come along and get over this thing.  But I can't be the one to stop it now!"    Someone wasn't counting on the tenacity of Ghengis Khan.  I gues...

This morning we took the  metro to visit the Forbidden City.   It's a huge, palatial complex that was built in 1420 by some emperor of the Ming dynasty.  (Carol, wasn't Kathleen's crazy cat named Ming?) This is Aaron, Tatiana, Rik and I in the outer courtyard. It’s massive and there are no trees - to make sure some rogue couldn’t climb a tree and assassinate the emperor.  It's called "The Forbidden City" because the emperor didn't want anyone outside of the royal family to get in.  Typical.   There were 800+ buildings and 9999.5 rooms built in it and there were all kinds of emperors who lived in there.  Plus their concubines.  Plus their eunuchs.  The emperor had 3000-5000 concubines whose sole purpose was to sit around waiting to be picked - then to bring physical pleasure to the emperor.  Gag. When the emperor died, the concubines were killed off too. (So the emperor could continue to have sexy time in the next life, I presume? Bu...

Ni-hao! This morning Rik took me to the breakfast nook around the corner from our hotel that he visited yesterday. He got a donut and pastry while I got the fried wrap filled with glass noodles and greens. Breakfast cost $1.25. The lady cook loved Rik.   After breakfast, our guide took us to the Muslim quarter of Xi’an.  It was a 15-min walk from our hotel and, along the way I took pictures of scooters. Bicycles and scooters are as plentiful as cars and I’d say about 75% of the riders are without helmets.   Men and women alike seem to be very fond of teddy bears and cute characters to adorn their rides.  Also, there is a duvet-type of covering popular with scooters.  I’m thinking it’s a great idea  not only to stave against the cold but it would provide cushioning in the event of an accident.  I’ll be trolling Alibaba for one for my scooter when I get home! At the Muslim quarter there were hundreds of stalls selling street food and all sorts of product...