Author: Willem

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The traveler is home

Everything after the Narita Express train ride to the airport went very well : picked up the stowed suitcase, get the luggage out of the way at the check-in, buying a last souvenir at the airport shops and stamps at the airport post office, and onto the plane.    It was 9 hrs to Seattle, and I got in on Saturday morning after leaving Tokyo on Saturday afternoon.

That’s me, waiting for the train. My car was actually number 6, though (there were people crowding the platform at the Car No 6 sign).
Stay out of the way! This is actually the front set of cars of the train arriving a few minutes before the departure time of 1.33 pm ..
The front set of cars is connected with the rear set of cars. It goes very quickly. I am not sure why the two sets of cars have to be combined at Tokyo station.
Inside the car on the way to the airport.
Street scene flashing by on the outskirts of Tokyo ..
.. and this looks like a Saturday morning ‘Little League’ baseball event.

 

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Saturday/ on the way to Narita airport

I’m out of clean clothes, my camera’s battery is almost dead and the charger is in the bag I left at the airport – and I did what I wanted to do in Tokyo!  I’ve got my ticket, and about to go downstairs to check out.  A short trip on Tokyo Metro to Tokyo Station and then on the Express to the airport.

 

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Friday/ Shinjuku

I had to go check out the area around Shinjuku station .. lots of people, lots of places and a nice vibe.   It is warm even at night (of course).

The entrance of the Uni Qlo clothing store. It’s more or less ‘The Gap’ of Japan and has a sale on to celebrate its 10 year anniversary (so it’s much younger than the Gap, actually). I bought two polo shirts for US$10 each. I ran out of clean shirts!
One of several signs for Shinjuku station, this one for the Marunouchi Line from Tokyo Metro.
Asahi makes many, many more beverages than just beer. This one from a vending machine came in handy on Friday.
This is a video game and game machine and parlor.
These little fluff ball soft toys are inside a coin-operated machine and are all hoping to get grabbed by a crane hook that the operator manipulates to try to grab one. Remember a scene like this in one of Disney’s Toy Story pictures?
It’s fun to cross the street with 10,000 other people (or so it feels like!).
This is the giant TV screen at the Studio Alta (store) entrance at Shinjuku station. Lots of young people hang out here. It’s the de facto meet place for friends on a Friday night in the area, no question.
Here’s my dinner from the 24-hr Dennys across from the Marriott. No English on the menu, and really no burgers. Cheers! to my friends in Seattle, I thought as I drank the Kirin beer. I missed you. I will be there soon.

 

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Thursday/ Skytree : Mission Impossible

Alright, so I tried !.. but couldn’t make it up to the Skytree’s observation decks (there are two).  I got there a little after 12 noon and the line was so long that they sold tickets for 4 pm.   School is still out here, so everyone was out in full force.  To make matters ‘worse’ there is a whole Skytree Town built at the Tree’s base : souvenir shops, stores, a food court and an aquarium as well.

This is in the Asakusa station area. Skytree visitors take the Tobu line from there across the Sumida river to the new Tokyo Skytree station. The entrance to the Tobu line is in the Matsuya department store building (right on the picture).
Still in the Asakusa station area, the Sensoji temple with a large plaza behind it that sells food and handmade gifts and souvenirs.
Here’s the glimpse of the Skytree from the street neat the Sensoji temple. The yellow lanterns provide a festive atmosphere.
Now I have arrived at the base of the Skytree. These ladies are enjoying the mist and cool air. I saw these misters at a few places on the Tokyo streets.
.. but don’t approach the misters ‘too much’. But let me submit that I think 1. It’s perfectly OK to get wet. 2. You are wet already, from sweating. I gobbled up several 500ml bottles of water yesterday.
Here is as close to the monstrous metal Skytree I could get. Skytree is the world’s highest free-standing broadcasting tower, ‘with cutting-edge Japanese building technology supporting it safely’, says the website (I think that means for earthquakes, I think). The structure is 634 m tall (2,080 ft).
Looking up from the base.
Yes? How is your knowledge of Japanese pop culture? This is Pikachu frolicking on a Skytree t-shirt from the gift store : a short, chubby, rodent-like Pokémon with yellow fur all over its body.   (They did not have an extra large shirt for me).
And if I were 4 years old, I’d love to have a pair of these bullet train sneakers.
Now I arrived back at Asakusa station, and I am walking on the Azumabashi bridge across the Sumida river. The two buildings to the right of Skytree are the Asahi Beer Headquarters. The biggest building resembles a giant beer jug complete with a foam shaped white roof. The shorter building is known as the Super Dry Hall. It is a black building in the shape of a beer glass, with an enormous golden flame shaped object perched on top (affectionately known as the ‘golden turd’)..
And is this riverboat is sleek or what? There may very well be aliens (from Mars) inside.
More paper lanterns, this in the park across the Azumabashi bridge.
Of all the Skytree toys and souvenirs I saw yesterday, this one has to take the cake : a Swarovski crystal tree fitted with LED lights that goes for 665,700 yen (US$8,400). This is in the Akihabara electronics store.
The main entrance to the Akihabara electronics store. I did check out the Seiko watches, but didn’t buy another one. I have too many already!
I have no idea how famous Kanako Mimura is as a anime character. There are posters around the Akihabara store of several other anime characters as well.
Here’s Colin Farrell on a subway poster for the 2012 version of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall. The Japanese characters gives it that extra little bit of high-tech edge, not?
This picture belongs with the one with the colored paper lanterns. It is a statue of Katsu Kaishū (1823 – 1899), a Japanese naval engineer and statesman.

 

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Wednesday/ in Tokyo’s Ginza district

It’s been a long day of travel but I’m in the Marriott Courtyard in the Ginza district, ready to settle in and get some rest.  Narita airport was very, very busy.  It took 40 mins to get through customs and another 30 in line just to buy a ticket to Tokyo on the Narita Express.  I found a baggage storage facility at the airport that took the unwieldy one of my two big suitcases off my hands.  They will store it for me for $5 a day until I return to go on to Seattle : a lifesaver.   I cannot use the trains and the Tokyo subway with two big bags!

Here’s my Japanese lunch (naturally, since I am on All Nippon Airlines). They do offer a Western lunch, but then I would not have jellyfish salad (top left), orange fish eggs, pink-and-white lotus root, smoked eel and some other items I did not recognize!
A countryside scene that flashed by while we were on the Narita Express shinkansen (bullet train).
The white bullet had stopped at Tokyo station, and you have to get your get up and go. The train stops for only two minutes.
Eek! It’s going to be WARM tomorrow. That 34 C for Tokyo is 93 F.
Taxis in the Ginza district.
It’s Wednesday night, so the streets are not very busy. This is the Matsuya department store, glowing with pink lines.

 

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Tuesday/ back to Hong Kong!

Yes, I know I was there just Sunday.  The van picked me at the Dameisha hotel today and brought me to the Hong Kong Marriott Skycity : making its way across the border, and the two bridges to Lantau island where the airport is.   I am making my way back to Seattle but stopping over for two days in Tokyo.  Might as well, I thought : it’s on the way, and I want to go check out the Skytree (tall antenna tower for digital transmissions, newly open to the public), and go to the Akhihabara electronics and toy store.  I love that store, bought a beautiful Seiko watch there a previous time (which I could have ordered on Amazon but hey! feels nice to say ‘I bought this in Tokyo’ and it brings the happy memories back).  I just think it’s going to be warm there, but I should be OK.  Not like I’m not used to warm humid weather coming from Hong Kong and Shenzhen !

Crossing into Hong Kong after a stop at the mainland border. I had to open my suitcases this time for a quick check by customs!
You have to be quick to catch this glimpse of Victoria Harbor and Hong Kong island : it lasts only a minute or so while crossing over to Lantau island.
And here is the backseat view of the suspension of the Tsing Ma Bridge to Lantau Island.

 

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Monday/ mystery language

We walked by this bus last night on the way to dinner.  First, the deer is not typically Chinese.  And then the characters are from what I can tell but the ‘Nuy Ek Gnot Iy’ below it is definitely NOT Pinyin (the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script).  Google translate cannot help, even with the ‘Detect Language’ option. Hmm.

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Sunday/ Hong Kong day trip

It was my last weekend for awhile here in the Hong Kong area.  So I felt I had to go there one more time to go to my favorite places and walk around.

This is the Shatoujiao Port crossing in the Yantian district. A little quicker than the Luohu crossing with fewer people, but one can only take a bus from here to Hong Kong on the other side – and depending on the bus schedule you could wait up to 45 mins for the next bus.
My timing turned out well : I waited only 5 mins for the next bus to depart. We’re now in Hong Kong and the high-rise buildings are starting to flash by. ‘Do not eat on the bus’ and ‘Fasten your Seat Belt’ says the signage in the window.
A ‘Find the Willem’ picture from the Staurbucks in iSquare in Tsim Tsa Tsui.
This is right next to the iSquare biulding, just a lot of colorful street signs. I think (I hope) the red banner sign with the shark on says that the store is NOT selling shark fin products.
This bus with the display advertisement that says ‘The Hilfigers Love Hong Kong/ on Nathan Road TST’ is ACTUALLY on Nathan Rd in Tsim Tsa Tsui as well !
This is in Central district. (I have no idea if real people actually aspire to buying Gucci clothes. I guess they do).
Bus in Central District decked out with a cure picture. I like the stethoscope .. but that syringe, ouch!
Now I’m heading back .. this is the classic industrial design of the Hung Hom train station roof. Lots of natural light comes in through the window panes in the wavy roof.
And here is another classic : the view as you walk out onto the plaza at Luohu station after arriving from Hong Kong, and you turn around. This is around 7 pm.

 

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Saturday/ NHK TV news

I stayed in (the hotel) on Saturday to catch up with some work.  Here are some snaps I took from the newscast on the Japanese station NHK.

It’s the 15 month anniversary of the 3.11 earthquake-tsunami disaster (an odd anniversary to mark, for us in the West, is it not?).
Even NHK TV broke the news of US presidential candidate Romney’s pick for vice-president Paul Ryan BEFORE it was official. Paul Ryan is a congressman, 42 yrs old, a budget ‘hawk’ and a conservative Catholic.
This is one of the medal competitions in the women’s judo. The woman in blue is from Japan, but I could not track here name down. The little clip of their bout of judo was ferocious ..
.. but here is she in the studio for an interview, soft-spoken and gracious.
The Japan women’s soccer team had high hopes of repeating their win of the 2011 Women’s World Cup final over the USA, but fell short (lost 1-2 to the USA in the gold medal match) and was very disappointed.
And here is Japan’s medal count as of Saturday .. not bad at all, I would say.

 

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Friday/ ‘Wonderful Tonight’

Five of us had our beers and a cocktail and some food in the lobby of the Sheraton Dameisha tonight.  Downstairs a band was playing songs to the theme ‘Caribbean Festival’.  One song was Eric Clapton’s The reggae version of  Eric Clapton’s 1977 song ‘Wonderful Tonight’.  Here is the first part of the song’s lyrics :

It’s late in the evening; she’s wondering what clothes to wear.
She’ll put on her make-up and brushes her long blonde hair.
And then she asks me, “Do I look all right?”
And I say, “Yes, you look wonderful tonight.”

We go to a party and everyone turns to see
This beautiful lady that’s walking around with me.
And then she asks me, “Do you feel all right?”
And I say, “Yes, I feel wonderful tonight.”

The view of the band in the Sheraton Dameisha from upstairs.

 

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Wednesday/ snow all over South Africa

Snow (other than that on high elevations such as the big Drakensberg mountain range) is big news in South Africa.  On Tuesday, snow was reported in all nine provinces of the country, possibly for the the first time ever.   Here’s another one : a third typhoon in one week made landfall on the east coast of China on Wednesday – typhoon Haikui -possibly the first time that has ever happened as well.

These two jokesters from the Free State province make believe it is summer outside in South Africa.

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Tuesday/ not going to the beach

We drive by this road sign every day on the way to work. (I like the little pictures). So we start out in Dameisha, and we go to Dapeng where the offices are.  I was curious to see where the two beaches mentioned on the sign were – and marked them on a Google map.  The little green island called Tung Ping Chau belongs to the Hong Kong territory, oddly enough.

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Monday/ Pepsi’s Aape can

Here is a limited edition blue  ‘Aape’ Pepsi can that I spotted here at work. (They come in brown as well, and yes, that is an ape face in the circle .. with several other faces floating around in the camouflage).  As far as I can tell the cans are marketed only in China.

 

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Sunday/ back to Dameisha

After checking out of the Shangri-La, I knew I had to go directly back to Dameisha : the little beach resort town gets a crush of visitors from Shenzhen on summer weekends that makes for bad traffic jams.  A rainstorm on Sunday afternoon made the traffic situation even worse, but luckily I was in the Dameisha hotel by then.

The driver in the taxi cab across from ours buys a bottled drink from a street vendor at a traffic light.
I like the ‘auspicious’ turquoise color of this deluxe Wuzhulong bound bus!
We’re winding our way through the little port town of Yantian, trying to get around the traffic jam on the S30 freeway.
I’m in my Dameisha hotel room looking down at the main entrance.
And here are the gray colors of the rainstorm.  It is the view from my hotel room looking out over Da Peng Bay with Dameisha beach and the Dameisha beach tower on the left.

 

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Saturday/ Shenzhen is hot and hazy

Here are Saturday’s pictures of being out and about in a very hot and hazy Shenzhen.  You can only walk outside for so long before it was almost necessary to go inside a shopping mall or store to get into some air-conditioned environment.  My colleague is new to Shenzhen and so we made the classic stops at the Shenzhen electronics market, the Civic Center plaza and concert hall, and finally went to the McCauly’s pub in Futian district to check out the expats and drink a beer.

Here is the view from my 10th floor room in the Shangri-La hotel towards the Hong Kong-mainland border. The green hill in the background is in Hong Kong. The Chinese building is the customs building.
Here is a map from inside the Luohu metro station. Its sister station across the border is called LoWu. The regional train station with trains to Guangzhou is right here as well.
This giant mechanical clock in located in the middle at the bottom of the first picture. The seconds hand sweeps around and around, so the on-lookers and those posing for a picture are about as close as they should get !
Scooters and high heels at the electronics market off Huaqiang Road, the main street with buildings that house vendors and stores from the Shenzhen electronics market.
This store sells iPhone and iPad covers, buttons, battery packs and related knick knacks.
This is inside the 10 story SEG building, each floor filled with cubicles or enclosed little stores that sell electronics components and products.
Just a colorful picture at a vendor’s cubicle that advertises a shoot-em-up game, that drew my attention.
These are little LED lights for sale.  They are used by hobbyists that build their own gadgets with electronic circuits and switches, and then the little light indicates an ON/ OFF or ACTIVE/ INACTIVE status.
This is the gigantic wavy roof on the Shenzhen museum viewed from the plaza that we emerged onto from the underground metro station called Civic Center. The kids in the foreground are roller blading.   
We’ve now gone up the steps and stand almost under the roof, and this is the view looking back. The sky was very hazy – I left the grays in this picture as the camera captured it (without auto-adjusting the colors with Photoshop).   The black item in the foreground in an umbrella.
Now looking back at the roof with the plaza on the other side. I adjusted the colors in this picture to make the red and yellow pillars stand out a little more.
These street musicians are doing a great job. I couldn’t understand a word, but they sang a beautiful song.
These golden beams that support a ‘spider web’ of rafters are from the lobby of the Shenzhen concert hall nearby.
This is the outside of the Shenzhen library. The photographer is using a gold reflector to light up (or warm up the colors) on his ‘subject’. He actually needs an assistant to hold the reflector at the right angle.
This is around 9pm on Saturday night and we have just emerged from the Shopping Park station in Futian district. The expat Irish pub/ watering hole called McCauly’s is right there.
And this is the night view of the Shangri-La hotel as I approached it after arriving at the Luohu train stop right there at the hotel.
There is a big mirror in the lobby of the Shangri-la hotel that allowed me to take a picture of myself.

 

 

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Friday/ escape to the city

I hopped in a taxi and came to the city of Shenzhen just for the weekend, just to get out of Dameisha for a night or two and save on the taxi rides back and forth.

This is the Kingkey 100 building at night : impossible to miss with its gigantic scrolling letters. Each letter is 6 stories tall !  It is near the Grand Theatre train station, named after the theatre in the foreground.   But there was no event and no theatre goers at the theatre on Friday night.
This is a bus stop nearby. The bicycle at the bottom right is a policeman’s.

 

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Thursday/ the O-lymp-ometer

I get my live (or previous day) Olympic Games coverage from China Central Television.  The rest of the coverage I look for on-line.  So that is how I stumbled onto the O-lymp-ometer : an invention of the National Post newspaper from Canada.  I like the term for the meter .. but what to make of those very Canadian (British) terms ‘rubbish’ and ‘lovely’ ?

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Wednesday/ warm and muggy

Two girls on bicycles just outside of one of the main gates of Da Peng village. This is shortly after 6 pm, as seen from the bus as we leave the office.

 

It’s mid-summer here in south China, so it’s warm and muggy almost every day.  I try to stay indoors but we have to walk to the cafeteria for lunch, which can be quite a sweaty affair even though it is just two or three blocks away.  We are all very thankful for the cool air of our bus at the end of the day.  One of the world’s great inventions, remarked a colleague : the air conditioner.

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Tuesday/ the Phantom

May I present one more exhibit from the uppity Mix-C mall in Shenzhen?  This is a 2013 Rolls Royce Phantom.  It lists for around $500k in the USA.  I had to ask a colleague to read the lettering.  Mm, looks like it says ‘ghost’ he said.  Good enough!
Rolls Royce is owned by BMW these days.  China overtook the U.S. to become Rolls Royce’s biggest market for the first time in 2011.  Towards the end of 2011 the inventory of a special $1.2 million red Year of the Dragon Phantom model was sold out (the reports from Bloomberg and others do not say how many cars that was).