Okayama

The closest big town to Kurashiki is Okayama and we decided to stay there for a couple days as it was good jumping off point for the contemporary art island of Naoshima, which we will get to later…

Transporting the Bride

The bride – these taken by a nice man we met in Okayama park. Stunning picture.

Kurashiki and Ryokan

After Miyajima, it was off to Hiroshima to catch the shikansen (bullet train) and head up to Kurashiki, a small town just south of Okayama. Most travelers running through Japan skip these little towns, which is unfortunate because they show a glimpse of an older Japan, away from the rush rush of cities like Tokyo or Osaka. It is more relaxed here, still with a focus on quality and process.

Kurashiki, and the region in general is known for its handmade Bizan pottery and there is no shortage of pottery shops selling one of a kind cups, bowls, mugs, etc that all have their own features and deformities. All pieces have a unique burnt orange glaze that symbolizes that this is not the machine made stuff generally found throughout the world.

We walked the canal in the center of town, wandering through different shops. I was looking for a coffee mug to keep and remind me of the place but I just couldn’t develop a taste for the material itself, with its rough glaze. Instead, we parked ourselves outside a shop and purchased a local microbrew and alternated between admiring all the handmade and hand-wrapped desserts for sale and people watching.

Kurashiki Kolsch

Tea

Miyajima, Vending Machines and Drunken Women

Seen in every Japanese guidebook, the floating torii or Miyajima is one of the most famous sights in Japan. In the old days, the fishermen from the town would go in and out of the torii to keep the bad spirits out. Torii protect against those evil spirits, ya know…

Yukata Festival!

If you read the last post, then you might be sad by now. Sorry about that, but you can’t talk about Hiroshima without talking about the bomb…

But I’m sure if you live in Hiroshima now, you don’t want to talk about the bomb anymore. It happened 70 years ago and while you most likely know many people affected by it, YOU don’t need to be affected by it everyday. And you probably don’t look down on Americans. In fact, you probably welcome them with open arms (or more likely a bow) and invite them in to see the fun parts of your city.

Onto Japan

Konichiwa! Genki desu ka?

Hello! How are you?

We had booked our return flight home out of Osaka so we had to make it Japan. And we wanted to make it to Japan because we had such a good time in Tokyo during our unscheduled stop on our honeymoon. Because we had already been to the big city and because we had been moving around so much, we decided to spend our 12 days in Japan covering a rather small distance of 400 miles (or two hours on the shikansen – bullet train).

Shanghai

I’m writing these new posts from my parent’s house in Mesa, AZ. I’m hoping to get completely caught up while we are here in the US for the next week. I only have about 3 weeks of travels to cover in that time and we didn’t do much in Shanghai.

Why?

Because we were tired of being on the road and we were even a bit tired of Chinese food. I love Chinese food but sometimes you just want to have a meal that doesn’t require picking bones out of your teeth, white flourescent lights and yelling.

Sometimes you just want western service, a glass of wine and maybe some nicely prepared pasta.

We also gave up pretty much any sightseeing and spent our time with family. Whatever time we had left was spent shopping (Kelly), watching the Mariners on mlb.tv (tim) and wandering the streets at night (both of us). We even caught Star Trek in the theater with our cousins.

But we did have some very proper meals here, starting with a very formal one in a private room and floor located in a nice hotel (they love massive restaurants here)…

Here we are with family - the starters out on the table.

Extreme Close-up - tofu

Our Meals in China (Part 5 – Beijing)

Onto Beijing…

Beijing is great for food. You can access much of the regional food without walking very far from your hotel. We had memorable dinners at two different Peking Duck restaurants (one famous and one not), a spicy Hunan restaurant, a very formal dinner at the Telecom Hotel (written up in Beijing Dining), lunch at The Loft and many snack along the way…

On the first night we arrived, we had dinner at a Peking Duck house that was recommended by the Hotel (we stayed at one of the Hating Hotels, which is a great, reasonably priced ($20-30 USD) hotel chain that is both modern and VERY clean – recommended for quasi-budget travelers)

The duck was the best I’ve ever had – though I’ve only eaten it before in NY and Seattle..No. They don’t carve it at the table. This isn’t a super fancy restaurant, but it was a nice place (ie no bright white lights or food on the floor).

But first you have to order. Let me see here…

” Hey Pai, can we get this thing well it looks like mushrooms..i think. The characters look like a little man fishing behind a house? Oh forget it. You take the menu…”

Our Meals in China (Part 4)

Well, I wish I had more pictures for Chengdu, but I don’t.

The thing Chengdu has going for it, other than Sichuan cuisine, of course, is the whole lazy tea house culture. There were people all over just sitting around during the middle of the day drinking tea, playing mahjong or cards or just chatting. It was great. We even met some old granmas and talked about when the communists took over. bad times for them as they were educated and the communists didn’t like the educated. Interesting stuff

So the one meal that really sticks out in Chengdu wasn’t anything fancy, but it was a nice restaurant near the WengZu temple. The deep fried fish we had there, about 10 cm long and spiced up were delicious and not at all fishy, which chinese fish tends to be…especially this far inland. The thick pot of mushrooms was also good…

Spicy Fried Fish

Our Meals in China (Part 3)

After a couple days of touring around Dali, which is a beautiful town btw. I highly recommend that you stay there for 3 or 4 days if you are heading to Yunnan. Just grab a bike and get out of town. Lots to see as farmers work all the local fields and life moves slow.

But we couldn’t be slow because we needed to get to Lijiang. We didn’t yet know that our plans to go to Tibet were not going to happen.

Lijiang, in my opinion, is like Ancient China Disneyland. I don’t really like it as it is mobbed with Chinese tourists and is now really catering to this crowd. But some people love it so maybe you shouldn’t trust me. We did see whole suckling pig on the spit and other good things, but the prices were sort of out of touch with China and nothing looked like it was being prepared with too much skill or care.

My favorite dish was probably what can only be described as a Chinese Breakfast Burrito. We picked them up from a cart one early morning. It was rice paper wrapped around a Chinese doughnut, bean sprouts and hot sauce/chili oil and it was really good.

We did have some nice meals in Shangrilia. In particular at a Korean place (we were really craving bibimbap) and at a dumpling and noodle soup spot run by Manchurians. The best dumplings we’ve had so far, not including the Shao Long Bao from Yang’s here in Shanghai

Onto the pictures…

At the market in Shangrilia. This was one of the dirtiest markets I’ve been to and with deformed dogs walking around, it did NOT make for a good atmosphere. I seem to remember even getting a little queasy at the end because of it – though I’ve yet to get sick from eating in Asia

Chopping up a duck for us. Total price: 10 yuan ($1.50)

On the Camera

I thought I should follow-up with the camera story. The end result wasn’t so bad. Before leaving for our trip, Kelly and I both purchased travel insurance from World Nomads. When we lost the camera, we contacted them, sent in the receipts and even that email thread from Bali.

They laughed at the last bit, told us they wouldn’t make us pay any ransom and sent us a check for the full cost of the camera which we had already replaced while we were in Sydney (and at a bit of a discount as it was missing the charger – which we already had).

And despite a little stress, it all worked out in the end…