Osaka Food
My tummy has never been happier. Visited Osaka Castle which I have to say is more interesting than the imperial palace. Yukihiro took me to eat Okinomiyaki which was amazingly good. I had some really good Takoyaki as well. And the Kaneko boys took me out to eat a a really nice Japanese restaurant where I sampled a ton of traditional Japanese foods. I caused the waitress so much trouble so I asked her to take a picture with us.
Labels: Travel
Japan 2006 Trip - Day 5
It has been a crazy busy, but great, day. I started off in the morning with Yoshiro's brother Yukihiro. He took me down past the Osaka Business Park (OBP) and into Osaka Castle. A very beautiful castle with a kind of violent history. I got to try Osaka style Okinomiyaki and it was delicious! Totally different then the one I had in Toronto. We headed over to Nihonbashi which is the electronic central of Osaka. Because Yoshiro told his brother I'm some sort of otaku he kept taking me around to strange stores just for otaku people. I looked inside a "maid" restaurant and just enquired at a few locations about buying a prepaid phone to use in Japan.
I was at the vodafone as well asking about buying the remote control for my cell phone but it is ￥5,460 (about $350 HKD) which seems kind of expensive just for a remote control. I think buying another phone is cheaper than that. But, on the side I'm debating about signing up for a prepaid phone with AU. Buying a prepaid phone through them is about ￥3,990 and the prepaid phone service is another ￥3,000. Rental is nearly as expensive but you're just renting a phone and service for 7 days.
We meet up with Yoshiro later, he had a soccer game earlier in the day, and he took over as my tourguide. We saw a ramen museum and a famous dessert spot. He took me to eat Takoyaki and to Namba bridge.
We met up with his father to go eat at Suigetsu （粋月）. While waiting I managed to find a jacket, one that I've been looking for, for a while. The food was really good, especially the dessert. We tormented the waitress with our English questions, but after we had a good laugh at her serving "bamboo babies" to us (bamboo shoots) she had a lot of fun coming back to serve us. She helped correct Yoshiro's knowlege of
kimono, yukata, haori, etc. It was a long day but we covered a lot so I'm happy.
Labels: Travel
Off to Osaka
Yoji and I had ramen with Akira near Waseda. Took a quick look at the Imperial Palace. Ended up in Osaka with Yoshiro, he's actually handsome in a suit.;
Labels: Travel
Japan Trip 2006 - Day 4
I'm in Osaka right now with Yoshiro's family. It has been an interesting day. Yoji and I met up with Akira down in Waseda. It is graduation season so there are a lot of girls wearing their kimonos on the street. We had some new style ramen and then they took me to the Imperial Place near Tokyo Station. I took the Hikari bullet-train down into Osaka and met up with Yoshiro in Shin-Osaka. We headed over to Osaka station and he took me to eat at Yodobashi. I just had a discussion about Japanese and Foreign insurance companies at his house, and it is really stretching my Japanese. The dictionary Amy and Kel bought me is coming in handy. I was told that a lot of Japanese that die forget to tell their family that they have an insurance contract. Since the families need to declare that the person is dead and request to collect the money, many insurance claims go unclaimed. Yoshiro is looking good in his suit, totally different then how he looked in Toronto. I noticed that both Yoshiro and Akira are above average in height for Japanese. I never noticed before but now that I'm in Japan I think even Hong Kong people are slightly taller on average.
Labels: Travel
Japan Trip 2006 - Day 2/3
My adventures in Japan continue. I'm sick which isn't helping my trip but luckily by staying at Yoji's place I'm being treated really well so I have a chance to recover. I'm eating well and sleeping well. Yesterday we went around the neighbourhood. We rode bikes (one of the primary forms of transportation here) all around the area, and spent some time at the playground with Max. I was feeling pretty tired though so I had retired early. Today we decided to be a bit more adventurous and traveled down to Asakusa. It is kind of a tourist trap maybe but still interesting to see. There are many traditional Japanese goods sold in this area, and I stopped off at the temple where I payed 100 yen to have my fortuned told. Basically you shake a container full of sticks and one drops out with a number. I picked up 100, the last number on the boxes. I was pretty excited, I figured this was really rare. Oh was I right, it was really rare, I got a totally horrible fortune. No matter what I involve myself in the worst will happen. It was quite an experience travelling with little Max. I had my first taste of what it is like being a parent, I wonder if I'll be ready for it at all. I'm starting to get a feel for the Keio/Subway/JR Rail lines. It is still confusing as hell, but I'll figure it out. Surprisingly the people in Japan are about the same height as the people in Hong Kong. The girls know how to put on makeup better though, and dress nicer. But then again they really use a lot of makeup here. Yoji's apartment structure has a public bath built in. I gave it a try today and boy is it relaxing. You just need to ignore the other naked bodies around you and soak into the hot water. Tomorrow Akira took the day off, he said he has just finished his fashion week at his company, so hopefully I'll see him quickly before I go off to the Kansai region.
Labels: Travel
Asakusa
Still a little sick but travelled to Asakusa;
Labels: Travel
Lost Luggage
Sitting in Narita Airport right after I was told someone else took my luggage.;
Labels: Travel
Japan Trip 2006 - Day 1
Kuko de nimotsu o nakushita, dakara mondai （くこで荷物おなくした、だから問題）. That about sums up my first day, the trip felt long, I flew at around 9:40am. Just before I boarded the plan I went through a security spot check. This was my first time sitting by an exit door. It was interesting, I enjoy the extra space for my legs but after the safety talk I was a little worried. Incase of an emergency I need to assist others in getting out, the attendent made sure I was both capable and willing to do this role. Luckily the plane landed without an incident. Once in Japan everything started to happen.
First off for those that don't read Japanese I lost my luggage at the airport. Even though I thought it would be UA's fault, apparently my luggaged arrived fine, but some lady mistakenly took my luggage instead of her own. The lady was a foreigner and did not leave any contact information so we had no choice but to wait for them to contact us. That came later on in the evening. In the mean time I went to get my JR Rail pass, and my Airport Limo ticket. I had to make a few calls once I arrived and the interesting thing is that the phones charge you based on the time. Even if you make a local call to a fixed line the phones will ask you to put more money into the phone after a minute or so. The cost to call a mobile phone is different than the cost to call a fixed line as well.
I made arrangements to meet up with Yoji at the Starbucks in SeiSeki Sakuragaoka. The airport limo was stuck in traffic and it took over 2 hours for me to get from the airport to that location. Once there I found out quickly that most people don't speak English. Hong Kong is an English speaker's paradise compared to this, but that's okay I came to practice my Japanese and so using my basic broken Japanese I managed to find Starbucks, buy a hot chocolate (that wasn't easy surprisingly), and find a telephone so that I could call Yoji again.
Yoji took me to go shopping for underwear at "Life" and then we went back to his house. His son Max is as crazy as ever, and we played most of the night. So far it has already been evenful, but promising. The weather isn't great but I'm still looking forward to the rest of my trip. My luggage has been found and I have tourguides for the rest of Japan.
Labels: Travel
Adventure Day!
I was invited to go on a trip to Sai Kung. I was under the impression that we would be going hiking but apparently that wasn't so. This trip was hosted by SME and run by a group called The Momentum Academy. Derek Ko was our training director. Dan is still visiting so I invited him and Tiffany along for the experience. Combined with a handful of students from Hong Kong and a class from Shao Guan Bei Jiang Secondary Vocational School of Guangdong we spent the day team building through various activities.
We separated the Hong Kong people to join one of the 4 groups of students that have already been made (teams A, B, C, and D) and we started off on our first team building activity, moving golf balls as a group using string and a ring. Our second activity involved transfering ping pong balls and ball bearings from one end of the field to the other end. The activities are different than the ones I remember going through retreats in school. We still sat down in a circle and spent a moment to allow people to talk about their experiences. I have NO clue why everyone was giving me pressure to speak, I think people just wanted me to say something in English, even the camera man was putting pressure on me so eventually I gave in and said a few words.
I really enjoyed some of the activities in the afternoon. There was one event which required us to use several items as stepping stones to cross the field as a team. That one really got everyone involved. People were holding out hands clinging onto each other. Ling came by right when I was standing on top of a can tightly holding onto another boy. She had fun taking her pictures (I have way too many gay pictures floating around). In a kind of Nostalgic sense we had a
Towers of Hanoi problem. The problem though is the rule for us was that each person makes a move in order. We are not allowed to communicate with each other but we each know the rules of the game. Tiff, Dan, and I asked to start off the group and some of the students quickly figured out what we were doing. Others were much slower and probably never really figured it out. The worst was their classroom teacher, she kept undoing all our work.
We had a bit of time after the activities to play around with the recreational facilities. It has been a while but I wanted to give tennis a try again. I've been itching to play for the longest time and oh boy do I suck at it now. Tennis is a much harder game than badminton. Harder and faster, we spent half an hour trying to get one return across the net. It wasn't until Dan joined in that I started improving. We built up quite a sweat, which has been good for my health, I hope I can keep up the physical activities.
Dan and Tiff have developed a little following around this time. Several of the girls have been stealing glances at Dan, while the girls have been openly commenting on how tall and thin Tiffany is. One girl even asked to take a picture with her. We joined them on a tour of the town (or area of Sai Kung), but I ended up as the tour guide.
It was a tiring day, but a worthwhile experience. We observed a lot of different behaviour based on how the children are brought up. Engaging in these group activities you really get to see individual personalities come up. It was a little hard though to restraint ourselves, I felt like I wanted to get involved and direct, but we needed to let the children discover things for themselves. Tiff mentioned that some of the selfishness might be attributed to the one child per family rule; however, two of the girls we spoke with at our lunch table come frome 3 children families. The rule is different based on your location.
I hope everyone had fun, I certainly did, and best of luck to these students. I hope they really enjoyed Hong Kong, and maybe one day they can come back to really see what it is like.
A Time for Laziness
I guess unemployment always does this to me. I'm starting to get use to the cycle maybe, finding work then being out of work. Actually, I've been lucky I suppose, I don't burn many bridges and some of the ones I still have up have given me work. I'm still teaching at SME Education Centre, and Readership. Part-time of course, but combined with tutoring Kevin's cousin I make barely enough to survive. I really need to budget my trip to Japan but there seems to be a lot I can buy when I go there.
I went to see Underworld:Evolution Sunday with Denise. My first time at the Broadway Cinema in Mong Kok. The theatre seemed kind of small but the movie experience was acceptable. I enjoyed the action (there is nothing else to the movie, the romance was thrown in there but had no purpose aside from being arousing) and the whole theme of the movie. I use to play quite a bit of roleplaying games when I was younger. I attribute a lot of that roleplaying to my current development. Though some people tend to get trapped within the fantasy world of roleplaying, it does allow people to develop their imagination and creativity. I don't recall where but I remember reading an article that talked about how children are losing some of their creativity because the games they play these days have everything defined for them. They don't make up sounds for their guns or swords, the dialogs are all pre-recorded. They play through set storylines without dreaming up possible endings. Will they all grow up thinking inside the box? The big screen feel was nice, but it really wasn't a great movie. Usually when the movie is done I feel like I'm back in Canada. This is the first time where I still felt like I was in Hong Kong. Shuffling out of the back door like I'm evacuating a building reforced that feeling.
DJ Lee is visiting Hong Kong. I met up with him today and took around some of the local sights on the Kowloon side. Of course we eventually headed over to the Star Ferry pier and we met up with Tiff down in Causeway Bay. Tomorrow we have a Hiking trip to Sai Kung with my co-workers at SME Education Centre, it should be a fun trip I really do miss clean air, and this hike should help clear my lungs a bit. I was feeling sick the last two days, maybe a touch of the flu that has been going around, but so far tonight I feel better.
On a side note I finished reading Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game again. I loved the book when I was young and I love it again now that I've read it again. It would be really interesting to see how they make a movie out of it, but I don't suppose it would compare to my imagination. I don't know why I've been feeling so nostalgic, reading the old novels I use to read when I was young (I finished the first two novels in C.S. Lewis's Narnia series recently as well) but these stories are just classics and so well written. I'm thinking about going back to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time as my next stop. First thing is first, organizing my trip to Japan.
Japanese Dinner
Last night I went out again with Henry and Natsumi. We had two special guests, Natsumi's younger sister, and her cousin. I started to study basic Japanese grammar, but I have a long way to go before my trip. I also had my first tutoring lesson with Kevin's cousin.
I received a call from Phoebe and Phyliss today. Looks like I might have a few day time classes at Readership in the near future. It will certainly help my jobless cashflow. I've invested most of my time preparing for my trip to Japan. I just fired off an e-mail to a bunch of people and hopefully I'll have everything organized soon. Right now for sure I'll be in Tokyo, but I hope to drop by Kyoto, Osaka, and maybe a side trip to Kobe.
As a side note the picture from my birthday dinner at Kaya didn't really turn out. Anyone else have clearer pictures from that night?
Another Birthday, Another Year
In the past I never mentioned my birthday to people. Usually Arthur, Rui, or Sai would help me setup something small, or I would just join my birthday with someone else's (Justin) who's birthday was pretty close. I decided to dive a bit more into event planning this year.
I have to say thanks to Wincy and her group of friends. Monday night they totally setup a great dinner for me. We went down to Wan Chai and bought some live sea food. They took it upstairs to the restaurant on the 2nd floor and had them cook it. Oh we had a feast of seafood, including lobster, scallops, and something that in Chinese that translates to "peeing shrimp". We hung out at Ah Hung's house in Kennedy Town until about 2am then I went home. Some people in that group of friends are married already. One of them brought their child out, Oscar. He's a cute kid, probably can do some child modelling. The parents were taking advantage of my English all night with him.
On my actual birthday My parents were the first to call me to wish me a happy birthday, next was Tiffany she only lost by an hour. But they all figured that I spent the previous night out late so they wanted to give me some sleep time.
Wincy's group really took the stress off of the first night's event. The second night was a different story. I had spent some time looking for a place in which I can host a dinner for 20 people. I was a little surprised myself at the number of people I managed to get together. I finally went back to Kaya, a korean restaurant across from Times Square, to work out a deal with the directing manager Susan. Susan has always been nice to me, I really appreciate the help and she's going to get me a membership card as well. It was a bit stressful because I had 6 people cancel on me towards the event time. I spent so much time creating a menu based on a count of 18 people. I had reserved the space and told everyone an approximate price the day before. Lets see, Huhu ended up with an important business dinner, Natsumi was sick, and the rest of the people just decided to cancel. Terrance was back in town and he was nice enough to showup to wish me a happy birthday, and Tiffany brought her cousin Cat out, whom I met before partying at Volar. It turned out really well, I recieved a styling hoodie from Tiff and Andrew, a nice business pen from Kevin.
I've offically stepped into the world of the metrosexual. Tiff recommend a charcoal mud mask product from Origins. I spent the morning with Joyce cleaning our faces and applying the mud mask. I felt a tingling sensation when I put it on but I don't know if it really has helped. Joyce also surprised me with a gift I've been waiting a long time for, a wallet. Strange maybe, but for a while I thought about going back to using a wallet but I didn't want to go buy one for myself. Though she must have spent a pretty penny buying it since it is a Burberry wallet. Her birthday is right around the corner so I'll see if I can pick up something for her in Japan.
My trip has been confirmed, I picked up a ticket for $3110 HKD to and from Narita airport (Tokyo). I'm setting up my schedule now with everyone, if any wants me to pick up something from Japan you'd better tell me soon.
I'm a little tired from my badminton game today so I'm going to stop here. Thanks to everyone for showing up this year for my birthday. A few friends from Canada remembered as well and left me messages. Sai actually called during my Korean dinner party which was a pleasant surprise.
Despite all my problem life is going well, I have good family, good friends both in Canada and in Hong Kong, plus I managed to pick up my overdue pay from Multiplex today.
Labels: Birthdays
Birthday Pictures 2006
Not offically part but the party at Volar was a good start to my week of partying. Sorry Cat and Tiff someone cut you guys out. Dinner at Wan Chai followed, great sea food. Last Korean BBQ at Kaya.
Labels: Birthdays
All You Can Eat Sushi
Kevin and I reach our joint 30 dish goal at all you can eat sushi.
Event Planning
For someone who isn't really working I always find myself feeling busy. Kevin came back into Hong Kong so, including Henry, the three of us have gone out a few times. He showed me this all you can eat sushi restaurant down in Sham Shui Po. The place is constantly packed because of the $39.90 price. For our first trip we managed to finish 30 plates (between the two of us). They key is to reduce the rice intake by breaking apart the Sushi. They were mass produced sushi anyways so they fell apart on their own without our help. I might look into getting a visa so that I can go into Shenzen with Kevin.
Other things that need planning. I'm trying to hold two events coming up, Monday night and Tuesday night to celebrate a birthday. I was surprised when I put together the names list for Tuesday night. I have over 20 people on that list (but not everyone can make it out for dinner). I still have chosen a spot to eat so if anyone has suggestions leave me a line. I don't want to split everyone up if I can but I realise finding room for 20+ people isn't so easy.
I've been looking into going to Japan. My goal is March 22nd, for about 2 weeks. Akira found a new job recently but hopefully he won't mind if I crash at his place. It will be nice to see all my Japanese friends again, I'll see if I can make it over to the Kansai region to visit Takeshi, Yuki, and Yoshiro. On the Tokyo side of things Yoji should be quite settled in now, our toronto girl Stephanie is there, Akira of course and then Tomoka. The thing that worries me though is juggling my Hong Kong commitments so that I can go to Japan. But if I don't travel now if I get busy again later then I might not get the chance. I've been talking to people about traveling to Tailand, Beijing, and Jakarta as well. My poor budget. We might have a few problems getting our money from Multiplex. Apparently they've moved recently as well. Not really running away but the timing just makes it suspicious.
I'm awake a bit early today because I mistakenly thought I had to tutor. We were partying at Volar last night until close to 6 again with Alvin, Tina, and their cousin Cat. Looks like a week of partying.
