It is crowded.
Category Archives: Travel
Escape from the Airport
The train started running at 6:00 AM, so I left the airport and went to the Kowloon waterfront, where I took the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Central. (Hong Kong refers to both Hong Kong island and the Special Administrative Zone that includes it. I think the name of the city itself is still Victoria, although no one seems to call it that.)
I couldn’t check in until afternoon, so I had to carry all my stuff with me. It’s only about 20 pounds, because I’ve slowly been learning how important it is to travel light. Still, I didn’t want to spend the morning hiking, especially since I only got about two hours sleep last night, so I caught one of the double-decker trams, went upstairs, and rode around for an hour or so. The fare is HK$2.30 (about 30 cents).
(Note the bamboo scaffolding in the background. Most of Hong Kong’s gleaming modern skyscrapers are built using bamboo scaffolding.)
After all that it was still only 9:00 AM, so I walked down some side streets that had rows of small markets.
The food seemed very fresh.
But I stopped in a bakery instead and got a pastry, then sat in Starbucks for a while. Eventually I meandered back to Kowloon and checked in right at noon.
And now I’m going to take a nap.
Hazy Sunrise Over Central Hong Kong
Midnight on Lantau
Hong Kong Airport is not exactly jumping on a Saturday night. Or a Friday night. Whatever night this is. I think it’s a few minutes into the 28th. That’s Saturday, right? Whatever.
Anyway, I don’t know what I’m going to do for the rest of the night. I can’t check in until afternoon. I have my Octopus Card, though, so I can go pretty much anywhere. The sky’s my oyster!
UPDATE: The trains do not, in fact, run all night, as I was for some reason thinking. So unless I want to pay extra for a taxi to go somewhere else and hang around in the middle of the night, it looks like I’m here for a few more hours, drinking flat whites, charging my iPad, and reading the Economist’s World in 2014.
Boxing Day Airport Report
The SeaTac Airport Central Terminal was renovated and expanded in 2005. It has numerous shops and restaurants, a floor-to-ceiling window with a view of the runway and the Olympic Mountains*, and plenty of space to sit or walk around.
But I’m not in the Central Terminal. I’m in the South Satellite Terminal. The Runway Grill looks like it might be my best lunch option.
* Not that you can see them most of the time.
Korea Collage
Japan Collage
Notes on Japan
Home now. According to the pedometer app on my phone, I walked a total of 534,826 steps in the last 22 days, or about 247 miles, an average of 11.227 miles a day.
Some additional notes:
- The paper money in Japan is all new. Every time I got change anywhere, I got bills that looked like they had never been used. In the two weeks I was in Japan, I never saw a bill that had even been folded. I can’t even guess how they accomplish that.
- Trash cans are surprisingly hard to find. I walked miles with trash stuffed in my bags because I couldn’t find any way to get rid of it. And when you do find a trash can, it will only accept a certain type of recyclable. It might be big enough for your Starbucks cup, but not the lid. Or it’s only for plastic bottles.
- Train station restrooms don’t have paper towels or air dryers. You just have to dry your hands on your pants. But many of them do have hooks next to the urinals so you have some place to put your umbrella. A matter of priorities, I guess.
- Japan often uses songs familiar to Americans in unexpected ways. There’s no cultural or lyrical association, so they just use the tunes. I was changing my shirt in a restroom in the Nagano train station and I heard a familiar melody that I couldn’t place. It was played in an 8-bit video-game style. After a few seconds, I remembered the lyrics:
Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Most intersections play the familiar chirping sounds when the light changes, but some of them play songs. One of the songs is Comin’ Through the Rye.
I also heard Yankee Doodle with Japanese lyrics playing from a video screen outside Akihabara station.
- In Japan you get wet wipes with everything. They’re a bit skimpy with regular napkins, but you’ll always get a wet wipe. In Korea the napkins have the consistency of tissues, but rougher. They’re in boxes at the tables, so you can have as many as you like, but they fall apart when you try to use them.
- Why do Japanese people live so long? They don’t do anything right. They smoke, they drink, they eat a lot of pastries and don’t exercise and work long hours in stressful jobs. And they outlive everyone on the planet.
Why? Is it all the green tea that they drink? Is it genetics? Is it just a result of counting dead pensioners?
I’m going to start smoking and drinking, just in case.
- 7-11 is a bank.
UPDATE: My route from start to finish.
The sky above the port was the color of
television, tuned to a dead channel
Central Tokyo
I couldn’t get a reasonably priced hotel room anywhere for my last night, so I’m spending $250 for a hotel downtown. Plus another $3 for wifi.
It’s been raining all day, so I bought an umbrella at Tokyo Station and wandered around the Imperial Garden in the rain. The garden itself is nice enough, but what really makes the whole palace area stand out are the many fortifications and moats. I think that there are probably a lot of places that could be improved by adding moats.
Next I walked through Ginza, which is possibly even more ritzy than the Champs-Élysées, given that they don’t seem to have a McDonalds.
I still had some time to kill before I could check in, so I went to the Tokyo Tower.
Tokyo Tower is 333 meters high, with observation decks at 150 and 250 meters. I could only go to the lower observation deck, because the upper one was closed for “maintenance,” which I think we all know is code for “monster damage.”
In addition, there’s a Mystery Ball.
Here’s a close-up of the Mystery Ball.
I have my own ideas about what’s going on with that Mystery Ball, and I’m afraid it means that Tokyo Tower will end up sustaining even more monster damage.
It’s not even the tallest structure in Tokyo anymore. That would be the Skytree, which you can see in the distance here. Monsters have not knocked that over yet, as far as I know.
Tokyo Tower also has a Lookdown Window. Here’s what it looks like to look down the Lookdown Window.
When I got back to the bottom of the tower again, there was a monkey.
I don’t know why he was there. He’s nowhere near big enough to knock down the tower.