Shanghai, China II

On Sunday, the next day of arrival in Shanghai, I joined a day tour. I did not research on Shanghai beforehand, so I was not sure what would be the best places to visit. Because this was my first visit in Shanghai, I decided to join the most basic one, the city tour.

The first place was here; not the entire city looks like this but only here. I have a great interest in architecture, so I was pretty impressed by these buildings. In my head, I was comparing with my image of “China” to what was in front of me. I think the real China was more colorful than what I thought.

	It seems this is a famous tea house.
	The famous Shanghai food, Xiaolongbao. The cooks were standing next to each other and making these small Xiaolongbao like a most efficient machine. There were the cook who makes the skin and another that wraps meat in it.

It was pretty impressive to see this many bamboo baskets standing. This restaurant seems to be a great Xiaolongbao restaurant where people wait for a few hours to get in. Unfortunately, I did not get to have any of Xiaolongbao on this trip.

Yuyuan Garden was the nxt stop. There are many beautiful buildings and unique architecture gardens or ponds throughout the garden.
In the garden, there was this wall with a dragon on top of it. The tail of the dragon continues to all the way in the back.

	This whole on the wall is one of the Chinese garden’s techniques that you can enjoy the view through this interesting shape whole. This shape has a role of being the frame of the view itself.
	Chinese buildings have very beautiful and detailed art work.
	This buildings seems to be very famous that if you didn’t see it, then you cannot say you came to Shanghai.
	I enjoy these seems-to-be the “normal” views more. It is just a small garden that has bamboos, but this is very relaxing to me and reminds me of Japan.

Once you step out of the garden, it is a residential area. Chinese New Year is coming soon; mid February. There were so many red items in stores. This one had many bakuchiku and lamptons hanged in the front. Everyone was very looking forward to the New Year's. They will have nine-day holiday.

We were brought to this silk museum.

There were ladies untying the silk threads from cocoons. According to the guide, there were different kinds of cocoons; one with one warm inside or two ore more. If there is only one, then the silk around the cocoon is made out of one silk thread. But if there are two worms inside, then there are two silk threads coming from the opposite sides.

With this machine, they take only the ones that have one warm inside. It is really one strong continuous silk thread. It is amazing. I think the guide said that the thread is about 2000km long. The cocoons in the blue basket in front of the lady are the completed ones; no thread but only the shell. Inside, I could see the worms through the shell. The guide said Chinese don’t waste anything, so they cook them and eat them. She said it tastes like crabs. (She also said that in China, they don’t say everything tastes like chicken but crabs.) The cocoons in the water are the ones in the middle of untying process. I got to touch a string of silk thread. It was surprisingly strong. In this untying process, even though one thread is strong, they combine some cocoons together make stronger silk threads.

At this moment, I didn’t realize, but when we moved to the next room, somehow somewhere, this guide started sales pitch for silk blankets. It was well done. After you see the whole process of making silk threads or blankets, you are really interested in the blankets and most likely would like to experience this “cool in summer, warm in winter” blanket. Most of the tourists were purchasing the blankets. It was amazing to see that. I thought I joined a city tour, but it turned out to be locked-in sales show. I guess it is a part of Chinese cultures.
Anyhow, I was not interested in those blankets, so while I was waiting for others to make the purchase, I was looking back to where I came from. Then I realized that those hard working ladies were just standing there! Believe or not those looks-like innocent ladies were a part of sales process! They were just demonstrating! I felt like I was cheated, but then I realized that there shouldn’t have been a silk thread factory in the middle of Shanghai…

Shanghai, China

A trip to Shanghai from 13th of January through the 19th.

I was very looking forward to the visit in Shanghai for a long time. I thought I could see more of traditional China. In Shanghai, most of the things are very new, but I still can see the traditional Chinese architecture here and there.

Shanghai is much colder than what I thought. It is very cloudy and dark, so it seems even colder. I was lucky to have the sun out when I took this picture. According to the tour guide, this part of Shanghai is sinking 1 cm every year because all the buildings are very heavy. But they are still building more high-rise buildings. As a matter of fact, they are in the middle of construction for the world tallest building here.

Hong Kong, China

On the 9th of January until the 13th, I came to Hong Kong. Even though the view from my hotel room window was great, the bed was as hard as a rock. I had never slept on such a hard bed before. I regretted that I should have picked a hotel on my own. It was not so pleasant to get up and go to work after having no good night sleep.
On the way to work, there was this area with many butchers one after another. Those butchers are outside both for pork and beef. When I looked at them closely, I found many interesting things hanging down on the wall including something I’d seen before or something I couldn’t even guess what it was.

	In the bottom-middle of the picture above, there is a long beef tail. It is not skinless, so you can see the actual beef tail as is hanging down. Also, right next to it, I think it is breast of cows, but I am not sure.
	In the next store, there were pork legs hanging down. These were pretty impressive to me! and disgusting! Those legs were grouped for long ones and small ones. I guess those were front and back legs. They look pretty gross. Other than those, I saw a pig nose cut right off the face but a long piece up to the top of the head; basically, a pig head but no sides of the face.
	A bag full of beef balls.

Two out of three day stay, I had dim sum for lunch.

	This is the menu as well as the order sheet. First, you write down a number on dishes that you would like. Then, they take the sheet and bring food. It is amazing to describe each dish in such short words. I can understand some of the Chinese characters, but it is hard to identify what those dishes are. Luckily, I don’t have to order by myself. Let the locals do it for me for best dishes!
	Dishes came out one after another. It seemed almost nonstop. Some of the dishes couldn’t make it to the Lazy-Susan (turning table). Of course, we finished them all.

The next morning, I had dim sum again.

Dim sum at nine in the morning at the airport before my flight to the next destination. What I didn’t know when I took this picture was that I felt sick the whole day after this meal. I guess dim sum for breakfast is certainly not for me. I’m Japanese with a Japanese stomach.

This time’s Hong Kong trip was short. And the only thing I can remember is dim sum...

Osaka, Japan

On the 24th of Dec, I came back to Japan. The two weeks that I can spend with my family is the best treat for me after working the full year. This is when I realize that it was worth working very hard, especially, to see my 6-year-old niece and 3-year-old nephew. I could say that because of them, I come home to Japan.

I was feeling a bit guilty not being able to spend enough time to pick their gifts carefully in Holland. Every year, I bring a suit case with full of gifts for them, but this year, I couldn’t because of my traveling schedule. Also, regarding buying gifts in Holland, because everything is in Dutch, I cannot pick up any books. I used to bring back English books, but I think the probability of the kids learning Dutch is very low. Also, the baggage weight limit is much stricter from Europe than from the states, so not many toys can be brought back. Anyhow, kids are honest. Kids looked a bit disappointed. But their aunt is back! They are already happy kids because of that, especially my niece.

Before my jetlag was completely gone, the New Year came. In Japan, kids receive some gift money from their relatives. It is called Otoshidama. Money is in those little paper envelop called “Pochi bukuro.” After the three days of New Year (the first three days are the major New Year’s holiday in Japan and these are when kids receive otoshidama.), these are the amount of pochi bukuro my niece and nephew collected! The amount varies, but the average for 6 years old was about 2,000yen ($17$).

When I was a kid, my grandma gave me coins (change) for Otoshidama. She used to say, “It’s Othoshi-DAMA”. (“Dama” means coins!) Back then, the largest coin was 100 yen ($0.85), and a couple of them were in the envelop. What a difference!

Kids usually receive Otoshidama until they graduate from school. That means kids receive until they graduate from college! That’s serious money engagement for all the relatives because as the kids grow, the amount goes up, especially when they change schools like an elementary school to a junior high school. Not everyone gave to me, but when I was in college, some gave me 20,000yen (170$)! Pretty good, huh?

	At my sister’s place, we made “takoyaki” for dinner. Takoyaki is a bunch of balls made out of flour and there is a piece of octopus in them. It is typical Osaka food. We usually have them for snack, but often we have them for dinner as well.
	It is supposed to be difficult to make takoyaki for whom didn’t grow up with them. The flipping takoyaki to make them perfectly rounded balls is the hard part. I am one of the Osaka professionals. It’s been a long long time since I made them last, but my skills weren’t gone. It’s right there in my hand. My 6-year-old niece said, “Let me do it all by myself!” and I go, “No No!” and I was fighting with her over flipping takoyaki. Shame on me.
	The final result, completed version of Takoyaki. This is the “normal” version. We also made soy sauce version which is an old style. To make soy sauce ones, we add a few drops in each ball before we flip them. Wanna taste some? Come but bring a Takoyaki-ki (Takoyaki grill)!

This is called Okonomiyaki. I would say this is also Osaka food. Osaka is famous for good food. People like to eat and care about food very much. I am one of them; just incase you haven’t realized that what I talk about on this website is mainly food.

This Okonomiyaki is from my “the” place. I’d been wanting to go for a few years but never had a chance. But this time, I finally made it! Usually, we sit at the teppan table; pan is built into the table. Then ingredients for Okonomiyaki is brought to the table, and you make your own. Okonomiyaki is similar to Takoyaki ingredients but with thicker dough with minced cabbages, and you make your choice of other ingredients like pork, squid, oysters etc. When one side is cooked, then you flip to the other side just like pancakes. In the end, just like Takoyaki, you do your toppings on top. It was REALLY good.

My family and I happened to go to a zoo in Kobe. I wasn’t really positive about the idea, but my niece and nephew insisted it.

	It turned out that this zoo had pandas! And they were so cute! I was all the way in the front line among other kids watching pandas!
	This year, winter in Japan is warmer than usual. I am not sure if this is the reason but this polar bear didn’t look so energetic. It was a moment to see the effect of global warming.

I was really into watching sea lions swimming in a pool. There was this aquarium-like-thing we can see what’s going on below the water surface from a big glass window, and the sea lions were swimming and passing right by the glass windows. It was really fantastic to see them that close!
And my sister goes, “it seems YOU are the one enjoying this zoo visit the most.” Oops!

O my birthday, a beautiful flower bouquet was delivered from a friend of mine. This day, I “crossed” the big age. Last year, I “became” the big number, but this year, I “crossed” it. Crossing the big number is sadder. Actually, last year, I was glad to step up to the big number. I felt like I became a real adult.

Those ten years since I was twenty years old, a lot of things had happened to me. And I felt satisfied from those ten years, so I was happy to become thirty. I wonder how the next ten years is going to be like. I hope I will also feel satisfied when I step up to the next big number nine years from now.

On the 9th of January, I left Japan for a trip to China, but I will go back to Japan again for two days before taking off to Amsterdam. And because of those two days in Japan, I can concentrate on my work. I’m very looking forward to going back to my family again.