Sunday 29 October 2017

Japan

Finally, I am posting about Japan almost a year after my trip!

 My sister always thinks that we're Japanese. Even after I got a DNA test and showed her the results, she still says that the DNA test could err and that we could be Japanese. Then again, a friend of mine from Japan says that my parents look Japanese. But this doesn't mean anything, really. Except it does put into question colonialism and wars and identity.

Moving on...

Notes from my travels

December 11, 2016
  • Industrious - trucks
  • Older - older people doing jobs I usually see young people occupying
  • Surprising number of signs are in English
  • Older people in tourst shops of Megome town - hope they don't rely on tourists for their livelihood (where are all the young people?)

I wanted to eat as many matcha-laden snacks as possible on this trip. On the first night, I got matcha mini Oreos.

Breakfast with natto in the background.

Downtown Tokyo. It's much quieter than I expected.

Vending meals

When we were going to Senso-ji temple, a TV station went up to O and asked him what he thought of Ronaldo the footballer. Unfortunately for the TV crew, he doesn't watch much football.

I'm in a bus of tourists from an array of Chinese diaspora. On such tours, usually I'm the only one who is foreign born. This is the first time I've experienced a diaspora with varying levels of languages ability, and from USA, Australia, and so on. Wouldn't it be cool if it were from an even wider array of people from the diaspora? It's interesting to observe parent and children language uses, and the uses between Mandarin and Cantonese.

In Tokyo the first day, traffic people were lining us up to wait our turn to get in the tour bus, and some horrifying deja vu-like lining up to go to an internment camp or to be shot ran through me. Blind sheep.

It's a surprisingly carcentric place. I fall asleep after seeing a Yamada shopping outlet, an Aeon mall and a 24-hour karaoke entertainment center in Nagoya. I wake up hours later to a Yamada, Aeon Mall and 24-hour karaoke center. The world just got a bit smaller.
  • Narita - the Soviet Union
  • Tokyo - Portland on steroids
  • Hakone - Salzburg
  • Nagoya - Montreal
Kindergartners are wearing orange caps on a day trip, being pushed in a cart.


Store greeters, when they have a spare moment, step out to pick up garbage and wrappers in front of their store.





Nighttime in Hakone

I think this is a bridge passing into Kyoto. Technology will be able to geolocate this.

Yet another matcha find.

Nara Deer Park

Todai-ji Temple - it's huge!

Osaka

Nighttime in Osaka, the city train can be seen outside our hotel window.

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