Nara

Nara is a city in Japan that has lots and lots of Buddhist temples, but it is mostly famous for its deer park. There is a large park in Nara where deer live wild, and people can walk around and look at the deer.

It turns out that my flight into Osaka meant I missed the earliest bus I could get to Nara, and the second earliest bus got me there after 8 PM. Most things of interest in Nara were closed. But I figured that it couldn't hurt to walk around and look! The bus dropped me off very near the deer park, so I decided to walk up and see if there were any deer near enough to the edge for me to see.

It turns out that the deer park does not close! So I walked around and saw some of the wild deer in Nara's deer park.

Nara also has a whole host of Buddhist and Shinto shrines scattered around it. All of them were closed, but you could still see some of them.

Then there's this shrine, or monument, or something... I'm not sure, since there was no English sign. but it was in the train station:

After this, I had to get on the night bus, so I didn't see more of Nara. But there's still lots of stuff from Tokyo to see, so be on the lookout!

Japan!

It would figure that my first real vacation, I would go visit another country.

Actually, I have a childhood friend who lives in Tokyo. I meant to take some time to visit her before I got to China, but the visa, etc., made all of that impossible. So instead, I got tickets to Japan for our first break.

This post is something of an overview of how I traveled around Japan. See, flying into Tokyo is really expensive, but I heard from a friend that it's cheaper and easier to fly into Kansai International Airport in Osaka, and then take a train or a bus into Tokyo. The cool thing about Kansai is that the airport is actually on an artificial island. They built an island just so they could have an airport there. I was on the second terminal, which was very windy.

What I ended up doing was flying into Kansai and taking an "airport limousine" bus into Nara, a little town that's famous for its deer. Then, I took a night bus from Nara to Tokyo. (I'm sort of smug about not paying for a hotel for one night.)

The night bus was actually super comfortable!

Every seat had a blanket, slippers, a phone charging station, and a nice little curtain. I got lots of writing done! 

Here was the first real view I had of Tokyo:

Anyway, once I got into Tokyo, I just took the subway and the JR train everywhere. The subway train tickets are tiny!

Just like America, the subway trains have all kinds of ads on them. Here was one that made me smile:

There are a lot of TV commercials in an anime style, too.

Tokyo has all kinds of canals dug through it - either that, or they built a lot of square islands in the rivers - so we have lots of water views.

Also, I decided I would stay in one of those capsule hostels:

I don't know if you can see the phone on the shelf in the back? The one thing that's lit up? That's not my phone. That's a semi-phone called a handy that the hostel lets you use. That way, you can use maps and such and not get charged roaming data. It's pretty handy!

One of my traveling games is to see if there's a Guinness pub in every major city. I haven't seen one in Shenyang yet, but here in Tokyo...

One more thing you can do in Tokyo... there's a live Mario Kart tour. As in, you put on a costume, get on a go kart that looks like a Kart from Mario Kart, and get a tour of the city. In order to do that, you need an international driver's license, which I don't have, so I didn't get to do that. I did, however, get the chance to see it: 

I'm pretty sure that black-and-white one is the bullet bike

Once done with Tokyo, we took the shinkansen (the bullet train!) to Kyoto, the place that's famous for all the shrines. Once again, we got to stay in a capsule hostel!

Then, we took a direct train from Kyoto back to Kansai Airport. I'm explaining all of this because it actually was a struggle to figure out how it all worked, so I want to share it. There are all kinds of buses and trains that go between cities in Japan, so if you plan to book a trip there, definitely keep an eye out for those!

Anyway, I have a post from Nara, 3 days' worth of posts from Tokyo, and then a days' worth of posts from Kyoto to share. So I'll have lots to tell! Stay tuned!

Beiling Park

Shenyang is one of those cities that changes pretty dramatically depending on where you are. Su Jia Tun, where I live, is definitely a country-esque part of the city, but just 10 minutes into the city and you're in a high-tech, flashy, shopping-type city that would make Chicago envious. Then, in the middle of that, you suddenly find Beiling Park.

The easiest way I can describe Beiling Park is to compare it to the Asian exhibits in zoos in America, minus the animals. You know how the plants always grow dark green and close together over your head? Beiling Park was like that. There were thick, waterproof green trees growing everywhere.

This was super surprising, at least to me, because a) I've never seen a zoo exhibit look close to reality before, and b) this was a very quiet, natural oasis in a bustling city of 8 million people. It went from being a fast-paced city to a peaceful garden in a few seconds.

The thing about Beiling Park is that it's not just a park. It is also a cemetery for important people. For example, there's a big tomb there with a bright red star (the symbol of the Communist Party) of a communist general.

But the most important tomb in the tomb of the Hong Taiji Emperor, the second Qing dynasty emperor, and his empress. The tomb is also a fortress, with places for soldiers to stand guard. It is a magnificent place, with beautiful architecture!

The entrance to his tomb

And... one of the cool things they have for you to do at Beiling Park is dress up in a costume and take pictures for souvenirs! I picked the costume of a princess.

More to come! Lots more to come!

Wuai Market - A Real Chinese Market

When I arrived, my apartment had the essentials, but not much besides, so I had to go shopping for a few things, including things that we don't have in the little convenience stores around Su Jia Tun. Well, getting out of Su Jia Tun is rather hard without a DiDi account (the Chinese version of Uber), and I can't get a DiDi until I get my Chinese bank account, so getting out and shopping has been tricky.

Fortunately for me, the HR ladies at my job are remarkably accommodating, and they offered to take me and a few other teachers out to Wei Market on one Saturday for essentials.

The floors behind me have all the vendors.

Now, when they talked about it, I imagined it would be some kind of shopping mall, like Westfield. It turned out to be much more of a flea market. A flea market that covered 5 stories. 

This was where you could bargain for prices. I actually discovered you can bargain without actually speaking the language. Apparently, I have a very good dissatisfied face, because the vendors would start lowering the prices before I said anything. 

Anyway, the big item on my list was a shower curtain. Now, I was fully expecting to go there and buy a shower curtain. You know, one of the prepackaged ones. The ones that can double as a picnic tablecloth in a pinch. 

Apparently, that's too western for Wei Market. What ended up happening was we went to a cloth vendor, who showed us a bunch of finished curtains. I picked one out that I liked, thinking that was the curtain. Oh no. That was just the sample.

Someone had to make it.

That's right, I have a custom shower curtain in my apartment, because that's how they do things in a Chinese market, apparently. Things do not come pre-made. They come in pieces, and someone has to put them together. 

Anyway, I paid for the fabric and the metal pieces, and then we followed the lady to where the tailor was. Here are some pictures of him at his work:

By the way, in case you're wondering, yes, that is in fact a treadle sewing machine. I wondered why they would have something like that, when surely it is more expensive than an electric sewing machine at this point, but I think it might be because there aren't many electrical outlets around that building. 

Anyway, in summary, this is my first visit at a truly Chinese market. The things you could buy were very impressive. I didn't see any phones or computers, but otherwise, you could buy pretty much anything you can imagine there. And it really is like a market - the different vendors are shoved together very close inside that building, and you really can haggle over prices. I heard one of my friends got a winter coat, priced at 700 RMB, for just 200 RMB. Vendors were very patient and accommodating, all things considered, but it was crazy trying to navigate the close spaces. Still- I thought it was a cool place to be, and once I get my DiDi sorted out, I'm going back for a nice, fluffy rug for my bedroom!

Chinese Holidays

The Chinese year has a lot of official holidays, and we had two of them right next to each other in November. The first was the Moon Festival, and apparently, the story I remember hearing from that cartoon Sagwa was right. Part of the celebration of the Moon Festival is that Chinese would use Moon Cakes to pass messages to each other when they were fighting the Mongols. It helped them win.

There's an even older story that comes from before then, as told to me by the HR department at school. It goes something like this: long ago, there were 10 suns in the sky. Too many suns were killing earth, so an archer shot down 9 of the suns. As a reward, a Chinese goddess gave him an elixir to make him immortal. He didn't want to live without his wife, however, so he didn't drink it. Then some bad guys found out about the elixir and tried to steal it; in order to protect it, his wife drank it all. This made her fly to the moon. To celebrate her, the archer and the other Chinese people stayed up late and lit lanterns in her memory.

There were lanterns all over the place leading up to the Moon Festival:

In the week before the Moon Festival, there were moon cakes everywhere. Even at KFC:

KFC is pretty much taking over China. 

So the Moon Festival was one holiday. The other holiday is today, October 1, which is National Day for the People's Republic of China (PRC). We have a week of work off for the National Day, much to my delight!

This week is called the Golden Week, and it's a time for a lot of Chinese people to travel around China and visit the rest of the country. I did not do this, since traveling is difficult this week, but maybe that's what I'll do next year if I can book my tickets in advance.