Kyushu

I flew from Tokyo to Miyazaki in Kyushu prefecture which was an experience itself. The Haneda airport in Tokyo is the domestic airport and is packed with people. I think part of it was because a big holiday week was just ending and people were headed off to other parts of the country. I flew to Miyazaki and rented a car. It was a bit of whirlwind as I didn't reserve a car in advance and so had a difficult time, not to mention, out of Tokyo, hardly anything in English. It was still fun and I drove all over the eastern coastline.

There are miles and miles of protected beaches here where there is really no development at all. Little villages are inland from the beach and there are big forest preserves, like the one at left, in between the village and the beach. No doubt this comes in handy during a big storm or tsunami as well.

Check out the videos of Takanabe beach and fireflies. I now understand why so many Japanese paintings have fireflies in them. There are millions of them everywhere. They fly in huge groups like birds. I'm not sure you can really see it that well on the video but they are thick.

Takanabe beach and Dragonflies:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HSGWorld

Pretty sure this sign is warning you about the storms.

I just love the way the little house protected by the trees is smiling.

I really didn't plan too well for this part of the trip (this was before Yufuin) but enjoyed it just the same. The day I had the car turned out to be quite overcast and rainy so I found a bit of retail therapy in Miyazaki. My first UniGlo in Japan and they were having a big sale. I also stumbled upon a discount store with TONS of fun stuff to look at. I was completely absorbed with the "lost in translation" tshirts.

The whole t-shirt thing is pretty fascinating in Japan. Everyone wearing shirts that say things in English. Frequently they say things that make little or no sense.

Yesterday in Tokyo, in the Shibuya district, I saw the fancy fashionable t-shirt stores where the designs make more sense but they are not nearly as fun as the others.

I imagine I will see tons of this in China as well.

After all of my searching, here is the shirt I ended up with from the store in Miyazaki. Joann, as a native Missourian, can you explain this?: LOL!!!

Life is good...pass it on! And when you figure out where that store is that has the delicious shells and fish of the fresh sea from Missouri is, please let me know.

Numata and gorgeous Japanese countryside

The view from the lovely home of Yoko's parents in Numata, Gunma prefecture, less than two hours from Tokyo by bullet train.

So all these years, I never "got" why of all the adorable Sanrio characters (Hello Kitty), they had a train. I've never liked that character...thinking that's not so cute. But now, in Japan, I get it. It's for the Shinkansen, the bullet trains which whisk travelers all over Japan. The Shinkansen is about as sexy (still not cute) as a train can get so probably well deserving of a Sanrio character. My first experience was to be whisked out of Tokyo to the gorgeous countryside north of the city. Tokyo station is a huge pulsing intersection of multiple subway lines, train lines, and the bullet trains. Somehow the more of these huge stations like this I see in the world, the easier they get to navigate. Rule no. 1, don't freak out and do your best to find your own way. These huge stations can be overwhelming but usually have good signage and at least some in English. English language info is relatively available in Tokyo but not once you are outside of the city.

The Shinkansen trains are fast, on time, and expensive. In fact, everything in Japan is expensive. Do check out the movie of the house. It was great staying in a real Japanese home with such lovely hosts. The food was amazing and I've eaten lots of different types of fish and tofu and bitter gourd prepared in many different ways. They have a huge garden and big bitter gourd vine right outside the dining area.

Here's Yoko walking back into the house after taking me on a tour of the area with Genko, her nephew. Yoko's father is an architect and the house is built on the property of what was once a silk farm and the residence of her grandparents.

That's Yoko laying out some of the dishes for my last delicious meal at the house. The seating area has a well for your legs so you are sitting on the floor but your legs are going down into the floor. It is a comfortable and natural way to sit.

The bounty of the garden which we enjoyed for lunch. Those baby tomatoes are some of the best I've ever eaten.

One of the best parts of our morning walk was seeing the real Hello Kitty. Not sure if you can tell from this photo but this cat is HUGE. I saw her resting under a car and thought it was a dog. I don't think she appreciated being woken up from her nap.

Other pics are posted here http://picasaweb.google.com/hellokittyinlondon/NumataAndYokoSHome02#

Video of the house...and the toilet: http://www.youtube.com/user/HSGWorld

I think you could do a whole blog just on the toilets of Japan. I have never seen such interesting variety and so many electronic controls that do all kinds of things. Suffice to say that the Japanese must have the cleanest bottoms in the world. I particularly enjoy the toilets where the lid pops up when you walk in the room. Now how does it know whether to raise the seat of not...mmmm...no doubt there is a toilet that does that as well here.

I was sad to leave Numata as I had a wonderful and peaceful time at this lovely home. I would spend the next 6 days traveling around the south island of Kyushu and a brief stop in Kyoto before returning to Tokyo where I am now back in the Shiodome getting caught up on my blog while looking out at the Tokyo skyline.

Oze National Park

This is Genko and me hanging out in the Oze National Park in Gunma prefecture where I had the unique and fantastic opportunity to stay in a traditional Japanese home with my YTT friend Yoko. This is her darling nephew who happened to be staying with his grandparents while I was there.

To say this park is gorgeous would really be a gross understatement. OK, after a typhoon in Taiwan and an earthquake my first night in Japan, I was ready for something serene and beautiful. I was lucky enough to go with Yoko and her family on their planned hike which was a 16 km loop through Oze National Park. What a day it was without a cloud in the sky and absolutely gorgeous scenery throughout.

The part of the park we hiked is a huge wetland area with km after km of raised wooden walking paths as you can see below where Yoko is headed off the distance. There were tons of wildflowers in bloom and yet it was not the peak wildflower time. The rest stations throughout the park were huge houses with the opportunity to rent a space to roll out a futon and sleep for a night or longer. I was quite fascinated with the enormous range of hikers out on this day including very small children and many mature adults, some that were easily in their seventies.

Our hike was supplemented by delicious homemade rice balls thoughtfully prepared by Yoko's Mom. These wonderful rolls were stuffed with tuna, Japanese pickles, black sesame, and other interesting vegetables. Delicious.

This was view while walking through the wetlands. They are lotus ponds throughout the wetlands and the lotus flowers opened up in the afternoon. It was very special indeed.

This is one of the informative signs at one of the rest areaS. Apparently bears poop on toilets and this is good for the environment. LOL!!! The Japanese toilets are pretty special...I'd want to use them even if I was a bear.

A little more Taiwan

Now that the shock and horror of the Morakot aftermath have started to die down a bit, I've had a bit more time to reflect on what a wonderful place Taiwan is and how much I enjoyed my time there.

It's amazing to me that I was in Kaoshiung county during the typhoon and that is where all the worst damage happened. I read in the paper today that two high level government ministers will likely resign over the slow response to the mudslide and something about a refusal to accept help from mainland China. UGH!

I realized what a lovely place I was in and how well the staff of the resort I was staying in did to keep things under control throughout the storm. We still had piles of fantastic food, were only without electricity and water for a couple hours and most amazing of all, the internet was only down for about 4 hours throughout. That was actually my saving grace as I would have gone a bit nuts without being online as you could see from the video, going outside at all was a bit of challenge.

The wonderful staff at the resort remained cheerful and helpful throughout. In fact, it seemed the people at the resort were pretty unscathed as well. Everyone seemed to be finding things to do (the game room was packed)

and no one was complaining. The sand bags were piled everywhere and many of the entrances and exits were blocked to the tremendous wind.

Oh yeah, the food...the breakfast....here ya go....

How about some nice kidneys for breakfast? Just where do you suppose these kidneys came from anyway? I am going to guess from a pig.

My favourite part of breakfast...the pau and dim sum...YUM!!! Some of the best I've ever had.

This was my favourite breakfast...some delicious watermelon, nice strong coffee, and three kinds of pau (or pow or boa or lots of other interpretations). The purple one (coloured by taro?) is filled with red bean paste, the white with BBQ'd pork, and the yellow one was plain. All delicious and fresh and steaming hot from the bamboo steamers.

Cheers to Taiwan and all the lovely people and food there.

“There's no disaster that can't become a blessing, and no blessing that can't become a disaster”___Richard Bach

I felt my first earthquake!!!

Taiwan took quite a beating from Morakot. I'm sure the stories will keep coming for days to come. They are just finding out about a lot of people missing in huge mudslide in the mountains. I wish the best for all the good people of Taiwan. My personal adventure involved waiting it out until Sunday a.m. when I was checking out of the hotel in Kenting anyway. I could tell that the storm had abated a bit but was certainly not gone and the ocean was still rockin' and rollin'.

After checking in several times, I finally heard the 11 a.m. shuttle would leave for Kaoshiung on time. It would take an hour or more longer than usual due to the road conditions. So off I went for a bird's eye view of the destruction. Downed trees and whole fields of crops destroyed. I understand the bananas took it the hardest. Our journey was full of twists and turns and at times on dirt roads or were they roads washed out from the storms....not sure. We had to take a more inland route and at times the road was nearly impassable. I got to play nurse to a poor young girl barfing her guts out through a good part of the journey. I think she was very grateful for my wet wipes, tissues, and essential oil spray. She knew the English workds "thank you" but that was about it. As it turns out, the south of the island took it much harder than the north even though the center of the storm was in the north. The river about 2 hours into the journey was the most surreal. You can't really see the full effect in my video but it was like boiling oil. The river was black and raging and GIGANTIC. This same river a couple days earlier looked mostly like a big beach with huge dry areas everywhere. This is the same river where the hotel fell into the river which has been all over the BBC and CNN. I am not sure of the name of the river but I am sure I will never forget that sight of seeing it after Morakot. So maybe there is a blessing in the storm:

Check out the video...http://www.youtube.com/user/HSGWorld or it should be displaying on the right side of the blog.

So we made it to Kaoshiung and HSR station. I was very lucky in that the station was pretty calm, I had no idea no lucky but would find out the next day. Anyway, there were no trains running at all which made me quite glad that I didn't buy a ticket in advance. I did have the good sense to buy a ticket then even though there was no guarantee of the trains running in the morning. I had to be in Taipei to catch my flight to Toyko at 1450 on Monday. I bought my ticket for the 7:06 train and headed out to the taxi stand. I ended up, with lots of hand signals to help, at a very interesting little motel in town close to the station. I had my own garage and stairwell. Kind of a drive through motel of sorts. Exhausted from the rest of the day, I just crashed into the rock hard bed (typical in many Chinese hotels but surprisingly comfortable) and flipped on the TV. Goodness TV is so boring, how does anyone watch it regularly? Of course, then there are surprises everywhere in life like when channel surfing you come across porn movies. What? Plenty of free porn to go with your Love Cats lubricant and condom (only 1) provided in the room. There was even a choice of porn, very American low budget style and Chinese style where you never see the man's face. How about that? Finally, my favourite part of the room:

VeryNineJoy Cream...see the video on http://www.youtube.com/user/HSGWorld or it should be displaying on the right side of the blog.

6:3o a.m. Monday at the HSR station. I was too lazy to get my camera out but really should have, there must have been 3-4 thousand people trying to get moving. Once again, things were on my side as the one train that was going to run was the one I had bought a ticket for the night before. YIPPEE!!! 2 hours later I was in Taipei and headed to the airport to catch my flight to Tokyo.

Finally, the title of this post must be explained of course. Early this morning (Tuesday 11AUG) in Tokyo there was an earthquake. I am on the 33rd floor of the Shiodome media building and I felt it BIG time. It was bizarre. I thought I was dreaming but then again, I never dream about earthquakes because I have no idea what they feel like. I had been awake at 5:30 and decided to do a little waking sleep meditation practice which frequently means I sleep for another 30 minutes or so. The whole building was swaying and felt like it was moving in a circular way. I didn't hear any noise. I understand there is now a tsunami warning as well. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes. ___Voltaire

Morakot is abating

Looks like Morakot will be settling down by tomorrow morning (Sunday a.m.) This is how it looked at 5p.m. Sat 8AUG09. Not sure if you can tell but this is the infinity pool and the sun loungers around it. Looking a bit rough from the beating it's been taking for the last 2+ days.

I finally found a good spot to view detailed weather and radar stuff. This is a great site if you are into that kind of stuff. There are plenty of great sites for US weather but not much for Asia. This one is very good: Weather Underground http://www.wunderground.com/

Here are the specifics about Morakot:

http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/?lat=24.8&lon=120.7&zoom=6&type=hyb&rad=0&wxsn=0&svr=0&cams=0&sat=0&riv=0&mm=0&hur=1&hur.wr=0&hur.cod=1&hur.fx=1&hur.obs=1&fire=0&ft=0&sl=0

My other pics from the US Navy site did not display on the blog so had to pull them off. Darn Navy boys...

Should be an interesting day tomorrow.

Morakot...or more wind and rain might be a better title

So I am now coming up on the second full day of hanging out with the typhoon. I do feel quite lucky to be safe and to have such great accessibility. The internet was down for several hours this morning but zipping right along again now. I tried to get out to the beach (video to be posted soon) and I really couldn't do it. The wind is still so strong and rain is so hard that I barely made it to the edge of the railing. The Flip was getting wet so I didn't want to ruin it for a foggy video you can barely see anyway. I saw online that the center of the storm has passed Taipei and should be weakening. The way the wind sounds here, you would never know it.

I had hoped to be able to go into the village (Kenting) which is just about 0.5 km from here but I don't see how unless this rain lets up. As it is I am very fortunate as many of the hotel rooms are flooding or all wet and stinky. My room is on the second floor and in a rather protected area so it is fine. I do hope I can get out of here tomorrow. I have to go to Tokyo on Monday. Dang, wouldn't want the weather to interrupt my travel adventure.

It does seem a bit brighter today but the wind and rain are just unbelievable. It is about 38 hours now that this island has been getting relentlessly pounded.

I think Taiwan has been pretty lucky. I'm not sure the same will be true when this storm hits mainland China. I hope it weakens a lot after passing over Taiwan.

OK, this movie (if you care to call it such) is very choppy and will likely make you horribly nauseated. I was trying really hard to keep the flip from getting too wet or foggy. It wasn't easy since I could barely walk against the pounding rain and wind. I might try again with my little waterproof Olympus camera which has a short video ability. Stay tuned.

For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously. ~George Gissing, "Winter," The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, 1903

the latest on Morakot

Here's another pic of the storm, you can see how it is starting to break up now that it has hit land...smacked dead center into the island of Taiwan.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=39720&src=eorss-iotd

This one made picture of the week.

Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan

Travel is the ultimate teacher...no doubt. I am currently sitting in my room on the coast in Kenting, Taiwan (on the southern most tip of the island of Taiwan) watching typhoon Morakot pound the island. Hopefully you can see the satellite image from the previous post. It came out a bit chopped up but if you click the picture you should see the whole image. Pretty amazing stuff. That monsoon storm on Phuket was NOTHING compared to this storm. This storm has been howling for almost 12 hours now. The sea is unbelievably rough. Check out my video on the usual spot.

Anyway, this is actually great to be on Taiwan during this storm as the internet is still working perfectly even out here on the tip of the island. How I do love things that work. Now if I just spoke some Mandarin.

Check out the other videos of Taipei too. I am really enjoying Taiwan. I took the bullet train from Taipei to ZongCheng which is near Kaohsiung (pictured at left), the largest city on the south end of Taiwan. I jumped on a bus from there and was in Kenting 2.5 hours later. There is a large national park covering most of the southwest coastline which is really gorgeous. Big mountains right down to the edge of the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. At the moment, I am quite glad to be on this end of the island as it sounds as if the typhoon will hit the north and northeast parts of the island the hardest.

Have to add a bit about food in Taipei and here in Kenting. I had the distinct pleasure of having Taiwanese hot pot in Taipei (the Taiwanese version of Shabu-Shabu - famous Japanese dish) and it was quite an experience. There is a whole street of hot pot restaurants on one street and I picked my choice based on the fact that it had a cute sign with a mushroom on it. Mushroom sashami anyone? No one in the restaurant spoke English and the menu was all in Mandarin, so I just winged it and it worked. The mushroom sashimi was fab, slices of a porcini type of meaty mushroom and served with shredded cabbage, wasabi, and soy sauce...YUM!!! The dried mushrooms were a bit more confounding. I was also served some tea where nearly half the mug was flowers and other things. Back to the dried mushrooms....mmmmm....the lady in charge came over and saw me staring oddly at the dried mushrooms and pointed to her mouth which I assumed to mean they were to be eaten dried. She smiled when I picked up the first couple and popped them into my mouth. The first couple I tried were very nice with a hint of toasted garlic flavour and very crunchy. The other ones looked like fur and I had been curious about them as you see them in many of the bakeries wrapped about buns and bread. I cautiously picked up a small amount and put them in my mouth. Gag reflex...I swear they tasted like those "funny" mushrooms that I've heard (wink...wink) taste like cow poo. I didn't have my camera with me that evening which is really too bad as I have NEVER seen so many different types of mushrooms. The basic hot pot is a boiling vat of broth with easily 10 kinds of mushrooms and some pork balls in it. After a few minutes of boiling you get to add even more mushrooms and cabbage. The final stage is to dip some super thin beef in it for a few seconds until it is barely cooked. Then you make a party in your mouth with a bit of mushroom, cabbage, beef and broth in a bite. You also drink the broth on the side throughout the meal. It's delicious and very healthy.

Awesome cookies from a Taipei bakery which I bought because they were so cute but they were also delicious with a soft buttery sugar cookie base and buttercream frosting.

The buffet spread here at La Chateau in Kenting really needs pictures to go with it so I will get some pics in the a.m. and you will see what a Taiwanese breakfast looks like.

The storm is pounding harder and harder here so send some positive thoughts to all of the people who may be adversely affected by this storm. I understand it is expected to hit the coast of mainland China quite hard. The wind gusts are now up to 130 km/hour by some reports.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain. ___Anonymous

Videos and pics

This is really odd with those stupid golf videos of some dude linked to my blog. UGH!!! Anyway, if you go straight to you tube, you can see my channel with all the videos listed down the left side. I'm not too sure about the playlist thing, seems like another way to spend more time on the laptop and less getting out and about. Not even sure how I did that one for Malaysia.

Pics and videos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hellokittyinlondon/PhuketJuly2009#

youtube/hsgworld

Having an internet connection that works is FAB!!!!

Rewind, unwind, and move forward

This was my room at the fab Indigo Pearl in Nai Yang, Phuket, Thailand. Yes, I had my own salt water dipping pool and a huge private patio. I spent 3 days here before joining up with my CELTA course at the British International School. This hotel is on the northern tip of Phuket which is two big national parks and a huge expanse of beach that goes for miles and miles. It is really lovely part of the island. I didn't expect to find anything so natural on Phuket.

Do check out the new videos posted to the right. That storm in Nai Harn on the southern tip of Phuket was really amazing. I listened to those videos again myself and decided I sound a bit...well...out of it or something. Anyway, it was 7 a.m. and I had just gotten up. I woke must faster than usual when I turned over only to see a gigantic spider in my bed. Thankfully, it was dead but who knows how that happened. Nevermind, I don't want to know. That was the weekend of July 12th and the storm lasted the whole weekend. The next two weekends were fabulous and I took full advantage by driving back to the southern tip of the island and the lovely Nai Harn beach.

A bit more about the CELTA course. We had 24 teacher trainees divided into two groups. It was actually two separate courses so we didn't get to know the other group nearly as well. At our award ceremony on the last

day, I found out that we had 3 PhDs among us, one of whom I had become quite close to, the lovely Mary Carey, a doctor of Eng Lit. Check out her blog at aboutamherst.blogspot.com. She is a journalist and teaches at U.Mass - Amherst. Here she is enjoying the lovely Nai Harn beach without the monsoon storm.

Mary and I became quite attached to this beach community on the southern tip of Phuket. It was just fab. Plenty of restaurants, shops, pharmacies (I am still endlessly fascinated with them), massage, and a wide range of hotels. We stayed in options from $12 to $100 and there are many more. I had the best massage of my life there for $15 for 2 hours and supplemented by a wonderful herbal steam bath which is traditional in Thailand. Our last weekend we had a 3 bedroom house in a lovely lush garden about 1 km from the beach.

Here is a view of Nai Harn from the viewing point above. It is such a nice little hideaway. I've realized there are some excellent benefits to excess tourism in certain places. Most of all I found I didn't have to see Patong at all and I didn't miss a thing. At the same time the island is full of diversity and is quite mature in what is available. I was able to rent a car (right hand drive, manual transmission) for a month without a hitch and return it to the airport on my way out. The Tesco, about 10 minutes drive from the school, was a huge asset for everything from club soda to magic markers to document covers. There is a huge variety of food including many great ethnic restaurants in every price range. We had an exceptional meal at Da Vinci, a lovely Italian eatery owned by a Brit who hasn't lived in the UK in 25 years. I actually lost track of all the places he lived but remember that he went to cooking school in France. The food was delicious!

The best thing about the school was a tie between the 50 meter pool and campus cats. Both FANTASTIC!!!

We had one kitty who became a bit of a permanent resident in Karon House, our dorm for the duration of the course. The room was adequate and I was thrilled to have my own bathroom. The freezing cold air conditioning blowing on my head every night was not as pleasant. I tried going without the air cond and that wouldn't work either. I think that is part of the deal at these intensive courses, it is a bit of everything thrown together. Could you make it through living with 24 strangers for a month in a boarding school style? Getting away on the weekends made it all worthwhile for me and I cannot understand how some of the folks did the course without ever leaving the school.

I had another wonderful night of sleep in my huge bed in Taipei and am starting to realize I'm done with the intense training stuff and now it is travel, travel, travel. Today I am going in search of a lovely yoga teacher I met in Kuala Lumpur who lives in Taipei. Turns out she teaches at a studio not too far from where I am staying. I'm anxious for her to give me some tips on what to do in Taiwan. Did you know there are big mountains on the island and it has the most natural hot springs in the world after Japan? Some people say it is the most underrated Asia destination. Finally, the internet speed is FANTASTIC and I can upload my pics and videos to keep in touch and keep my own record of my big adventure!

Happy Monday!!!

I survived!!!

My oh my...I completed the CELTA course.... I really didn't know if I was going to make it. At the beginning of the third week, I really hit the wall. Anyway, it's all good. Here I am on the last morning of the course. I still had one

(full hour) teaching practice to go. As you can see by the look on my face, it didn't matter. I was SOOOOO ready to be done. I may have overdone it a bit by doing the intensive YTT for a month followed by CELTA for month.

BTW, I am enjoying some delicious chicken congee for breakfast here.

It was a very intense and challenging month. I don't think I have been that challenged on so many different levels in many, many years. It was exhausting. Last night as I lay in my huge king size bed with crisp white cotton sheets watching Sex in the City reruns and sipping a Taiwanese beer, I knew it all worth it and I am thrilled to have completed it. Towards the end of the course I realized I needed a break from the third world so jumped on a plane to Taipei, Taiwan where I am currently staying in a lovely boutique hotel in the heart of the fashionable Da An area of the city.

I have lots more to say about the last month but will save it for later.

These pictures pretty much say it all about Taipei so far:

Yes it is a Hello Kitty bakery and it is right down street from my hotel.

Cheers!