Hangzhooooooouuuuuu!

The train ride itself was not long - maybe 2 hours or so - but it was definitely enough time to catch a few winks of sleep (as we did on basically every train; you have to take it when you can get it, you know...) By 0900hr we had clambered off the surprisingly modern train (more modern than any I had come across in Vietnam anyway), through the mass of people pushing to exit the station and were lugging all our worldly possessions towards the hostel a couple of kms away. Famished having not eaten any breakfast, we enjoyed the hostel's buffet breakfast for a few bucks immensely before catching a taxi to the train station in order to book onward tickets to our next planned stop, Xi'an. Unfortunately, the train we had wanted was booked out and so our time in Hangzhou had to be cut short by one night.
Hangzhou has two faces - there's the city and then there's the small settlement nearby the area's centrepiece which is where we spent our time. The pretty side of Hangzhou is based around the famous West Lake (Xi Hu) which actually used to be a lagoon before it was dredged in the 8th century by order of the governor. I didn't realise they had the technology for dredging back then..? Since then, the lake and its surroundings have been beautified with gardens, man-made islands and pagodas. Today, the lake has been personified as a young woman whose beauty was enhanced by her elegant dress, and Hangzhou has become a very popular getaway for folks from Shanghai and further afield.
Our first day was spent mainly in the area northwest of the lake, firstly at a mausoleum of a 12th-century General - which we both found quite uninteresting - and then in the Yellow Dragon Cave park. We climbed the mountain hoping to find the stone dragon head that is supposed to be at the summit, however we didn't come across it somehow. Instead we settled for a photo of the view over the massive lake which was almost entirely obscured by fog (or possibly smog).
On our way back down, we saw a tea field or two and a teahouse situated at the top of several flights of steps leading from the main path. We were intrigued by the sound of a small group practising their traditional Chinese singing and this lead us up a wrong set of steps. At the top was a group of people going about their business, practising Tai Chi and playing Chinese chess, all in front of what looked to be a makeshift place of worship embedded in the rockface. We felt as though we were intruding on their area in some way and so thought best that we find the teahouse for some 2nd class Chinese "dragon" tea (yes, we were a bit stingy and figured that the more expensive 1st class tea would taste exactly the same to our untrained palates - and it really did just taste like green tea). Still quite a cool experience to say that we experienced tea in a teahouse on a mountain in China :)
We stopped off to buy a couple of packet noodles for lunch at a convenience store. They actually made it for us which was pretty neat, mainly because they could see we had no idea what to do with all of the sachets. Now now, don't judge til you've seen some of the complicated packets you can buy here.. These particular ones contained self-boiling water!
Mid-afternoon was Lingyin Temple time, although we didn't actually get to see the temple but instead explored its lovely gardens and caves. The main highlights here are the Buddhist carvings in the limestone caves and rockfaces lining the path leading upto the temple. There is even a large laughing Buddha here to which we witnessed a monk paying homage. That evening, after catching a bus back to town, we felt like some Japanese food and so ate at the Ajisen Ramen diner in the food strip on the lake's eastern side.
The following morning I hired a bicycle to ride around the lake while Lee took a wander around the area. I came across Tai Chi, kite flying, multiple weddings, stunning scenery, groups of school children, a sea of cyclists, and a few people who really wanted to have their photos taken with me while I read my book in a lakeside park. On my way to meet Lee after all of this excitement, I was almost hit by a car that refused to stop for me as I crossed the road at a pedestrian crossing - I've been informed that you shouldn't make eye contact with the driver because then they'll know you've seen that they're coming and will actually speed up! Ridiculous..
After a bit of searching we came across Chinese fast food up a small staircase. We had no idea what was on the menu in this obscure yet busy establishment and so had to ask the manager to assist us in ordering our lunch. Always fun trying to order food when no-one can understand each other.. Turns out it was a great choice though and we thoroughly enjoyed the rice and chicken dish we received.
Dairy Queen Ice cream! You can only crave ice cream for so long before you cave and today was one of those days.. We had an interesting conversation with a woman who was looking after a group of international primary school students. Her husband is contracted for another year to an American company based in Hangzhou but she just can't wait to get out of China.. Now that would suck. During our conversation she suggested that we should not miss Hangzhou's "Old Street" - basically an old pedestrian street lined with stores and makeshift puppet theatres - so we hailed a taxi to spend our last hour or so there before catching the train back to Shanghai for the evening.

Photos:

just in case we become airborne?

painting

cup-a-dragon tea

the monk and the Buddha

one of the guys was kind enough to let me hold his kite.. pretty neat

Xi Hu

bridges across the northern side of the lake

right place at the right time

random guy wanting my photo :)

Down low, Shang hai

One of Lee's friends from AIESEC now lives in Shanghai and we stayed with her during our time here. RVenus was a lovely and gracious host and we really appreciated her help and info about the city - whether it was ordering food for us and showing us around or writing names of cities and sentences in Chinese characters so that we could book train tickets. She even caught a taxi to the ferry terminal to meet us so we didn't get lost!
The first afternoon, for lunch, RVenus took us down the street from the apartment that she shares with two others to a small run-down store where you pick the noodles, vegetables and meats that you want from a (rather unhygeinic looking) cabinet and they cook it up for you. It was really tasty.. I love local food! We had a bit of a walk around and visited a temple based in the centre of the city before heading back to the apartment. Later that night we met up with RVenus's other Aussie mate, D'anne, and walked down to a neat food street lined with stalls, shops and restaurants. Lots and lots of long metal skewers with cooked meat and vegetables! Mmmm. And the dumplings.. Minced pork mixed with some sort of gelatine so that as the dumpling is steamed the gelatine liquifies into a soup. Basically, a pork dumpling with soup inside that you suck out. It's great! But be careful, it will scold you if you bite into it too quickly!
The next day we left late from the apartment and had a bit of a wander around the pedestrian mall that is East Nanjing Road. Very commercialised. And there are people handing out small business-card flyers everywhere. They will shove them into your hands if you don't want them and even if you can't read them! I walked away frustrated and then a little shocked to find that three of them had been slipped into the side pocket of my daypack - where I keep my camera - without me even realising.. From then on, we both decided to wear our bags on our front in situations like that.. Since that point we've been noticing even a lot of the locals walking with their bags on their front or at least their hands covering them. I don't think I could live in a place where you had to always be on guard like this. Oh, Adelaide...
After that little cheap and painless wake-up call, we got slightly lost looking for the Yuyuan Gardens. We ended up finding an old-school Chinese area called the Dragon Gate mall where we browsed the knickknacks and many assorted teas on offer. After lunch, the picturesque Yuyuan gardens revealed itself to us and we paid our entrance fee. The gardens reminded me slightly of a traditional Japanese garden with its carp-filled ponds and temple-like buildings.. Maybe it is just more of a general "Asian" garden, but lovely nonetheless.
We had planned to catch an Acrobat show this night but were a few minutes late and, not wanting to miss the start of the show, decided to put it off til the next evening. Instead, RVenus took us to an awesome hotpot restaurant - the best one I've ever been to! Later after this, we caught a cab to a Mexican resturant-cum-Nightclub called Zapatas for some free alcohol! I know, sounds too good to be true but it's not.. Free entry, free beer and free girly drinks for a few hours! Pretty good deal if you ask me!
On our last day in Shanghai, before heading off on our first of many trains through the country, we had to actually buy the tickets. The queues in the train stations for purchasing long-distance tickets are so long and again with the pushing, impatience and non-helpfulness... The people behind the counter were impatient with us trying to book one ticket, as were the rest of the people in the line which was evident with the gradual increase in ambient noise and one guy walking to the front of the line and yelling at us and the ticket officer in Chinese. We only took about 3 minutes...
After all of this was done and we had our tickets in our hot little hands, we moved onto Renmin Square within which is a pleasant park seemingly separate from the city, its pollution and noise. The Shanghai Museum is also found in this square. Labelled as a "must-see", I must admit it didn't exactly manage to maintain our interest for too long. It is really well set out and the objects are nicely displayed, but if your not a fan of 4 floors of pottery and old coins, this probably isn't the place for you... That evening we managed to get to the Acrobat show on time, which turned out to be amazing! The things those guys can do is very impressive, as you could well imagine!
Up early (so many early mornings!) for the train to a place we would have never heard about if it weren't for advertisements on the English-speaking Chinese TV channel, CCTV, that we had watched in Singapore with Jianngan. This place was Hangzhou.

Photos:

picking food out for lunch

all sorts of delightful goodies...

construction works

Dragon Gate mall

trying to have a photo taken in the Yuyuan gardens

the view from RV's apartment

in the Renmin Square park

Acrobatics!

Sayonara Nihon, Ni Hao Zhongguo: The Ferry

We boarded, and departed at 12. 12 foreigners, 2 Japanese and 100 Chinese. Our future experiences in China were already starting to present themselves to us as we pulled away from a country we had grown to love and ventured into the unchartered (at least for us) territory of the Sea of Japan. The politeness, the calm, our relative invisibility, all gone. The people were loud, they yelled, they were always in a rush (we never knew why as were stuck on a boat for 48 hours), they stared, they pushed, they were unhelpful, they spat, they took secretive photos of us, they were space invaders (no, not the retro arcade game, but invaders of our personal space). And, perhaps incongruently, they also would get up before sunrise and perform the calming ritual of Tai Chi on the deck.
This is not painting a very nice picture of China, I'm sure. It is a beautiful country, don't get me wrong, but unfortunately you do have to get past all of these unpleasant traits first to really enjoy it - we still haven't quite gotten past the staring and the spitting.
Back to the boat, we made friends with all the foreigners very quickly. Again due to the language barrier, this time a little larger because of the tonal nature of the language, it was difficult making conversation with most of the Chinese. Some could speak a little English and they were quite funny when trying to show off their skills at singing English karaoke songs when there was nothing else to do at nighttimes - for some reason Christmas carols were the genre of choice? All us "outsiders" took over the karaoke bar the first night and then back again on the second night until it closed at a sleepy 10:30pm (yawn) and we were left entertaining ourselves with the cheap cups of sake and large beers dispensed from the onboard vending machines.
The ride itself was pretty calm in my eyes, although Lee has a different viewpoint on the matter. The weather was cloudy on the first day, warm and sunny the next and cloudy again on the day we arrived in Shanghai. I woke up at 5:30am to catch the sunrise on this last day but missed out due to the clouds, however I did manage to have a few more photos taken of me by some curious and rather excited Chinese.
The number of freight ships we encountered throughout the entire trip was quite unexpected, and as we entered the mouth of the Huangpu River and started inland towards the city, that number increased exponentially until it was almost like cars on a busy suburban road. And oddly, they captain their boats as if driving a car - overtaking and cutting others off, pulling out in front of other ships.. No order really.. I saw a lot of near misses.
As we pulled into dock, the sky cleared and Shanghai's iconic area came into full, stunning view. The European-style Bund on the west side of the river and the purply-red hue of the Shanghai Oriental Pearl TV Tower on the other. It was very pretty, and possibly a little deceptive as to the overall cleanliness of most of the city's, most of the country's streets.
We had arrived in China.

Photos:

our trajectory

as the sun sets

the "white" crew

looking a little dishevelled

getting into the karaoke!

trying to get that perfect shot

tai chi at 6am

Shanghai!!!

thefinaltouches

We had a deadline for getting to Osaka. The game started at 6:00pm. We had to have our bags put away in a train station locker (as we had no accommodation for the evening) and be on the Kobe subway line enroute to Koshi-en. We arrived amidst a sea of people, some in business suits, some in more casual attire, but all with the same purpose and expectations: to watch the Hanshin Tigers crush the Hiroshima Toyo Carp! The atmosphere was electric as we walked into the stadium and the crowd was already deafening us with their chanting and banging of small plastic baseball bats together giving their team as much support as humanly possible. I've never seen a more enduring effort by a crowd in my life, there was not a single point during the entire baseball game in which there was silence from the crowd, constant cheering and singing and banging and chanting... It was amazing and, as I said, the atmosphere was simply electric because of it.. I couldn't help but join in. The Tigers? They won by a mile.
Back in Osaka, we found a Manga cafe tucked away in a small alleyway and stayed there for the night. In fact, both of our nights in Osaka were spent updating blogs, writing emails and sleeping in the reclinable, yet squeaky seats of this internet cafe. During our last two days we pretty much wandered aimlessly about the city.. We even went to see an IMAX film - the same one about deep sea life as I saw a few years ago in Sydney, just in a slightly different language :) We took our last tour through the biggest electronics store I've ever seen, Yodobashi camera, before exchanging some currency, Yen for Yuan, and our final dinner in Japan.
The following morning we made our way to the Osaka Nanko international ferry terminal to check in for our 48-hour ferry across the Sea of Japan to another, completely different country.. China!
So that's it... Our time in Japan has come to an end! Time seems to be going so fast it's scary..

I'll not forget this country, it has taken a place in my heart!

Photos:

off to school

Manga-style.. so many comics..

a team before the match moves alcohol from cans to cups

Baseball!!

someone did something exciting!

as the Tigers won.. so many condoms!

waiting for the subway

Looking sexy at the IMAX

Koya-san: the height of Buddhism

Up early in the morning, Lee and I were about to embark on an adventure. Something neither of us had experienced before. We caught a local train for a couple of hours, sloping and winding gently up the side of a forested mountain as it went. At the end of the line there is a cable car that whisks you the rest of the way up the mountain at a much steeper pitch in only 5 minutes. From here, a bus transports you via a snaking road to the cloistral town of Koya-san (Mount Koya).
Koya-san is the headquarters of the Shingon school of Esoteric Buddhism, and as such has a wonderfully free feel to it - although this could also be due the fact that it's quite secluded and situated near the peak of a mountain. You often will see a monk walking down the street doing some shopping for his monastery, or even nipping into a restaurant for some lunch. You will also not be able to avoid seeing a temple or two while you're up there with over 110 still standing and in everyday use - at one point there were about 1500 (!) before, in the 17th century, the Tokugawa shogunate (dictatorship) forced the destruction of the majority of the monasteries due to "religious differences".
The biggest cemetary I've ever seen is located in this town. It's name: Okuno-in. During the 2km long walk to the Toro-do (Lantern Hall) at the top of the complex, I was absolutely overwhelmed by the number of tombs stretching on for hundreds of metres out from either side of the cobbled path. Images of Buddha are abundant throughout the cemetary and it's assumed that any serious Buddhist in Japan has their body (or even just a lock of hair) buried here ready for when the future Buddha and the founder of Shingon Buddhism, Kukai, returns.
The Toro-do itself is amazing with hundreds of hanging lanterns dimly lighting the interior. Two of these lanterns are believed to have been burning for over 900 years (although the when I looked I couldn't see any that were not using electric bulbs). In the centre of the hall, amongst the rows and rows of religious texts, kneeling on a cushion in front of a table covered with gold instruments and a statue of Buddha was a solitary monk chanting in that low-pitched, reverberating, yet soothing and awe-inspiring tone we all picture when we think of monastic prayer. It was something else. Difficult to explain, and certainly difficult to forget. All of my senses were focussed on that moment. My eyes on the monk, my ears on his voice, my nose on the smell of incense, my fingers on the cool touch of the brass handrail in front of me.
That evening we stayed in Henjoko-in, a temple run by a group of relatively young monks. They prepared dinner for us (strictly vegetarian, of course), but not before we took a dip in a hot bath to cleanse ourselves ready for the meal - in Buddhism, even eating is a way of learning the Buddhist ways and cleansing is always necessary before any learning is commenced. After dinner, we had the honour of meditating under the instruction of our very helpful (and English-speaking) monk, Suzuki, and under the watch of Siddartha, his translucent image painted on the wall in front of us.
An early night made way for an early morning. I awoke at 5am to watch the sunrise, but because of the surrounding forest I didn't get a chance to actually see the sun before heading back to the temple to experience the monks' morning ritual. At 0630hr, they chanted words from the ancient texts in front of them while others prayed to Buddha in their presence. Again, this was performed under the low light of yellow-orange lanterns. An hour later the monks finished chanting and we were served quite a traditional Japanese breakfast (again vegetarian).
Just before we departed we were able to paint, using calligraphy, an image of Buddha. Mine was an extremely detailed picture of Vairocana, the Buddha of the Universe, which took well over an hour to complete. Once finished, Suzuki chanted a short verse to bring some of the spirit of Buddha into us and our paintings. That was a touching gesture!
This was probably one of the most memorable parts of my time in Japan...
Our time on Koya-san certainly felt very limited, but we only had a few days left in Japan and we still had not been to Osaka. So we said our goodbyes and made our way back down the mountain to Wakayama, where we said our goodbyes to Kevin as well and picked up our stuff ready for the train.

Photos:

on our way up the mountain

the cable car

Okuno-in

studying the headstones

such beauty

Pilgrims pour water on the many manifestations of Buddha in return for blessings

Dinner!

the image of Buddha representing the moon under which we meditated

don't forget to remove your shoes...

man, that place was Wak!

It was a toss up: either we stay in a hostel (or Manga cafe) in Osaka or we spend our time with a good guy and someone who has been living here for a while and knows the cool spots to hang out. We opted for the latter option. We decided to catch up again and stay with Kevin in the town where he is currently residing, Wakayama, about an hour or so outside of Osaka for a good part of the rest of our time in Japan.
Basically the whole of the first night and the next day were spent sleeping in and relaxing in Kevin's apartment simply because we could. It was great not having to move around and "sight-see" for a bit. I think we all need these lazy days sometimes. The second night we went out with a whole bunch of Kevin's friends to an izakaya restaurant (the Japanese equivalent of a pub - a drinking establishment that also serves food) which served up some tasty dishes.
The next day Kevin took us to a sushi train restaurant for lunch - Lee's and my first time eating real sushi. It wasn't as gross as I had imagined, and the fact that special orders rocketed out from the kitchen area on what could only be described by Kevin as a mini-shinkansen made the experience all the more fun :)
In the afternoon, along with a few of Kevin's friends, Johnnie and the Aussies Mark and Tanya, whom we had met at the hanami party the week before, we hit a place called Round One, just out of town. Six floors of gaming pleasure all under one roof.. And even on the roof.. There is a skating rink (which doubles as a mini-motorbike circuit and we took full advantage of this fact), basketball courts, baseball batting practise, an archery range, a driving range, a massage parlour, floors of crazy Japanese game machines, a curling rink, and even a pool where you can practise your fishing... with real fish! As long as you throw them back again, of course.. Basically, any game you could want or think of! Awesome fun!
For our 5th to last day in Japan, we decided we'd visit another ancient capital. I mean, why not? This time the city was Nara, the first official capital of Japan (for a mere 75 years, mind you, before Kyoto took over the reins in 785AD). Nara, like most places in this country, has a rich history which is expressed through its temples and monuments. There are some lovely traditional gardens here, and then there's the main attraction, Todai-ji temple. The real reason to visit this temple is to see the world's largest wooden building, Daibutsu-den hall (daibutsu meaning, literally, Great Buddha). So you can imagine what you will find inside. In fact within this hall are three huge Buddhas, the centre statue being the Daibutsu, one of the largest bronze figures in the world at just over 16m in height and containing 437 tonnes of bronze and 130kg of gold!
We managed to spend the majority of the day wandering the large park-like areas of the western part of town before perusing a few shops for some tapestries. In a small, dusty old shop we found the perfect tapestry - we just had to have it - the problem was that it, too, was dusty. Now although that didn't bother us, it seemed to bother the lady store-owner.. She basically refused to sell it to us. After much discussion (as much as can be had without understanding a single word each other was saying), she ended up dropping the price to Y400 from Y2400 on her own accord before letting us purchase it! We were offering to pay the Y2400 (about $24) but she wouldn't have a bar of it.. It was too embarrassing for her to sell a dirty piece of merchandise for such a "high" price.
Now something like that definitely would not happen in Vietnam - they would probably tell you it adds authenticity or something just to get the sale.. In fact, I don't think I could think of any place even in Adelaide where that would happen. It just goes to show how different Japan is. In so many ways.

Photos:

so many photos of Lee asleep.. our quarters in Kevin's pad

a common sight on trains in Japan.. mobile TV?

self explanatory I'd say..

one of the floors in Round 1 - MASSIVE!!!

Daibutsu-den

the giant Buddhas

Japanese lantern

ancient Japanese cricket....