Take your digicam out for a walk

Have you seen it?

I received my DVD right before my recent trip over there. I watched it on the way to Tokyo (on a 12" Al Powerbook and noise cancelling headphones) and again (on a big screen and proper Dolby Digital sound) when I returned home.

The movie does a good job portraying the sensory overload of Tokyo and the various islands of calm that can be found in that big big city. It connects at many levels and I'd gander that most foreigners who visit Tokyo on a regular basis can relate to many things in the flick.

Anyhoo, here's a rundown of some of the places that Bob and Charlotte visit in the movie. And if you've not seen it yet, go do so. Tonight.

Then book your trip.

When I'm in HK, I usually find some time to go here to have a smoke. This place is above the main Shanghai Tang store in Central in the Pedder Building.

Now since I'm here to smoke, I usually go downstairs to shop. The clothes are nice and the home decor stuff is nice. It's nice and nice & expensive! So I don't buy but I do shop. I did pick up a CD of old Mandopop songs remixed, much like the recent Verve Remixed CDs called Shanghai Divas in Residence.

Except this was only 6 songs plus the remixes so I guess that's 12 songs. Still kinda short but it's a nice CD. I found myself listening to this a LOT on the Tokyo subway after I ripped the CD to my iPod. The remixes are about as long as the ride from Sendagi to Hibiya. It's a nice groove and being on the train, it just fit.

Go here and click "next" at the bottom right corner of the page. You'll see the CD on the next page.

On my last trip here (November 2003), I stayed at the New Koyo in Taito-Ku. It's a bit out of the way, then nearest JR station being Minami-Senju. That's several stops outside the Yamanote but you can't beat the price.

This trip, I decided to stay somewhere different, albeit a tad pricer. The Annex Katsutaro is in Yanaka, a little bit closer than the New Koyo is. The nearest subway stop is Sendagi on the Chiyoda Line. It's a one block walk (as opposed to the 6 block death march from Minami-Senju to the New Koyo). If you're on JR or jumping off the Skyliner, you get off the train at Nippori Station and walk for about 10 minutes.

There's a big pedestrianized street after you walk past the Yanaka Cemetary with all kinds of markets and shops. That's called the Yanaka Ginza.

Walk to the end and make a left. Walk another block and you'll see the Annex.

It's new and it's modern and it has three times the space that a room at the New Koyo has. And it has free internet via CAT 5 jacks in the walls. Wah!









The room was roomy, clean an it had a microfridge. And its own bathroom. Next time me and the fellas come to Japan, we stay here. No more friggin' business hotels for me!

Best of all, if you dun bring yr Powerbook w/you, there's FREE internet in the hall, a pee cee and a slot loading iMac. An iMac! Cool!

Thumbs up, and this is why I stayed here as opposed to the New Koyo this time, April. =P

Today was my last day in Tokyo. Blah. The plane leaves for San Francisco at 1945 which means I go BACK in time and arrive at 1100 today.

That date line thingie can be a real pain in da butt...

I had some time today before I had to leave for Narita on the Skyliner. Since it leaves at 1445 and it takes about an hour to get to Narita, I had the morning to putter about. Now what is the Skyliner? Well...

There are several ways to get to Tokyo from Narita. Most people take the JR N'ex, the Narita Express. It takes about an hour to get to Tokyo Station and another 15 minutes or so to go to Shinjuku and another 30 to get to Yokohama (at Tokyo Station, the train splits in two). It's in the neighborhood of 3000 yen (yes, that's about US$26 or so) EACH WAY! It's not worth it unless you have a JR Pass (in which case, all JR lines are free) or if someone else is paying.

There are also private railways here, usually ran by department stores (go figure!) such as the Tokyu Lines or the Hankyu Lines in Kyoto. Keisei Electric Railways runs the Skyliner that runs from Narita to Nippori, terminating at Ueno. The trains are older and look a tad funky, but it's only 1900 yen each way (and if you hunt around, you can get discounted tix).

I had a chance to visit Roppongi Hills, a very upscale redevelopment in Roppongi. It's an attempt to bring some grownupness (respectibility) to the area. It's pretty nice. I visited the Mori Institute for the Future, a urban planning exhibit that compares New York, Shanghai and Tokyo with some neat 1/1000 scale city models and a bunch of multimedia shows. And naturally, no cameras allowed.

Sorry bout that.

Gotta putter, the train will leave soon...

Besides visiting questionable icons of bubble-era architecture (see below), today was an eating day.

I had lunch with Yumi which was good. She's off skiing tomorrow. Fun!
Lunchtime is the same over there as it is over here. Short. Only an hour. Bummer.

I had a late supper with Takeshi, a friend I met when he was in San Francisco for a few months rooming with Cesar after graduating college. He works too hard. But he did have the time to hang out after work. We watched the football game between Japan and Oman (Japan won 1-0 with a last minute goal) at the Jazz Cafe London and had some drinks and smokes.



Then dinner with race queens! Well, the food was pretty good actually, but the service was fanstastically beautiful! Couldn't take pix inside tho, so you'll just have to be happy with the link.

If you take the Ginza line from end to end, you'll begin in Shibuya (yum yum!) and end in Asakusa. Not Akasaka, which I've had a horrible habit of confusing the two.

You can tell you're in Asakusa because:

#1: There's a river. Neat.
#2: The oldest western style tavern (since 1891) is here.
#3: You can see the Phillipe Starck designed "golden turd" when you come up from the subway and look towards the bridge.



Actually it's called the Asahi Dry Golden Beer Hall or something like that. There's a couple of restaurants inside but nothing like the Yebisu Beer Museum that I went to on my first visit here.

Well, this trip was for doing things that I didn't do before.

After all, Tokyo is the second biggest city in the world and HK is HK...that's all that needs to be said about my destinations. Lots of things to do and see on top of the things I usually do and see.

But old fun habits die hard. Like staying out until the last train. And busting butt to catch it.
Once again, I'm on the last Yamanote to Nippori via Ueno.

A western ward of Tokyo divided by a train station. West is highrises, the Tokyo Metropolitan City Hall and that Park Hyatt where Lost in Translation took place.



East is shopping, Kabukicho and a general mess which means it's the fun area.

There's an observation deck at the top of the tower (like most big buildings in Tokyo do) and I was able to see the New City Hotel where I stayed in with some friends on my first visit here.



Not that impressive. It is a business hotel, meaning very basic and very old, from the 1960's.

You really get an idea about how big it is here and just how expansive the city sprawl is.



That's only looking west now! Looking east, you can see Tokyo Dome AKA the Big Egg where the Giants play.

I'm what's considered an internet traveler.

I get a guidebook about a place I'd like to visit and devour it.

Then I research places to stay on the internet and usually make my decisions based on that.

Generally they've been hits as opposed to misses. Like the place I'm staying at for this trip. They even have broadband in the rooms for free (bring your CAT5 cable!).

The flight from HK was a bear. Well, actually not. Getting up early to get to the airport, that was a bear. Thankfully, in front of my HK digs, there's a taxi stand.
This place is another "hit". It's smack in the middle of Causeway Bay, a short block from the MTR, exit E and another short block from a Wellcome, because every traveler needs a 24 hour grocery store.

Then I was upgraded gratis to Business Class. For free. Nice.

The flight was about 3.5 hours. Like flying to ORD from home. But then once you land at NRT, you have to endure a 1 hour long train ride into town and then you have to try to find your hotel. Which brings me to the topic of this rant.

The maps on these Japanese hotel sites (I ran into this last time when I stayed at this place) are NOT to scale. They're great at noting landmarks where you turn left or turn right. But the distance between these landmarks, at least on the map, is the problem. It's usually longer than it looks like on the map!

Gotta go stretch my legs, this was a long day.

This is Kowloon City, near the site of the old Kai Tak Airport.

It's not accessible directly from the MTR so you either need a good map or some local friends to take you around. Big difference from Central, eh?

They look like they need the Caped Crusader really bad! I mean, that's a big lightshow with a LOT of spotlights...

heh.

Here's some snaps I took this morning from the 42nd floor of that feng-shui challenged masterpiece, I.M. Pei's Bank of China building.



This is the Bank of China building in case you don't know how it looks like. Rather iconic, eh?



This is the base of it with one of the historic buildings in HK Park for scale. The BOC is actually across the street. It's pretty big, eh?



Now, here's the snaps. This is the International Financial Center 2, the third tallest building in Asia. It's really tall and it looks like it will shift the skyline further west then it is now. Here's how it looks from the ground.



And from the Harbour via the Star Ferry:



That's one big building folks.

You also get to see the other side of the former Governor's Compound. This time you can see the front.



Until all the big buildings and landfill happened, the Governor's Compound loomed over all of HK side.



This is the former War Memorial. During British administrations, the Union Jack flew from the harbour side and the standards of the three services, the Royal Navy, British Army and RAF flew from the island facing side. Knowing the power of symbols, the ChiComs immediately fenced it off when they took over in 1997, being unable to simply bulldozer it because people would remember that there was once something there and it's harder to rewrite history in a (for the moment) free society.

And...since I was up ANYWAY, I decided to putter about.

The Hong Kong Park is on a hill between the Mid-Levels and the ground. It's pretty nice and it's compact and right next to the British Embassy. An oasis from the urbanism that is Hong Kong.



There's a walk-in fountain that looks like you're under a big umbrella in a very large rainstorm.



There are statues and memorials to various people and causes, as expected.





There's even this testimony to the fact that there are apparently a lot of Americans here too.



You have to be going UP the stairs to see this. Duh!

When you go on vacation, it's an opportunity to do different things that you wouldn't do at home.

One of those things for me is to wake up early. I woke up at 0630 after a deep sleep. Couldn't sleep any more.



Since today is the 11th, there's a morning flag raising ceremony in Wan Chai.






This is one of the things that I've never seen (the other is the firing of the Noonday Gun) here in HK. From what I've been told about the ceremony, it's still in the British style. Lots of foot stamping and shouted commands in english.

This compares to the daily ceremony in Tienanmen Square where you've got 32 goose-stepping PLA soldiers goose-stepping across Chang'an Lu.

And if there was any doubt of the traditional aspects of the HK ceremony, these guys played at the end. You could hear them three blocks away!



I shot some video with my Ixus but you'll have to wait until I get back to see it. iPhoto only downloads photos. Now I need to get some breakfast.

Landed at HKG this evening; long long flight with awful food and indifferent service.

Had bulkhead seat on border with Business Class. Everyone there had their laptops out and plugged in so they could escape the Hollyweird rejects that passes for inflight movies.

Except for Master and Commander which looked pretty good. Now that it's up for an Oscar, it's in the theatres again so I can see it on the big screen.

Customs was a breeze but this was the first thing that you see coming outta there. It's a bit disturbing.



Took the Airport Express, 23 minutes to Central and then a free shuttle bus to my guesthouse. Nice. BART has nothing on this way to the airport. Neither does Tokyo, BTW.

Even got to grab some dinner (wonton place across the street from Times Square, my PM arrival place). Don't ask me the name, I don't know it. Just know where it is.

See, there's a ritual I've got. If I arrive in time for lunch, I have wonton at Tsim Chai Kee in Central. I arrive after dark, I go to this "across the street from Times Square" joint. It revolves around food, yay!

Even dragged my friend out to Lan Kwai Fong for a pint. But that's it. Too tired to go on. Back at guesthouse to sleep...

HKG is a big big airport.

They have to use people movers to get people from the gate to the terminal.

When you come down the escalator, you may see or hear the train leave. Being from San Francisco, my first instinct is to run like hell down the escalator and try to jam the doors. This is behaviour that has been ingrained due to years of a MUNI victim, never knowing if or when the next bus/train will come.

Then you look up and see this:



And sure enough, it does! Never see that in the US.

Well, the cuts in airline food budgets have even hit the international flights, at least in steerage.



This carb-laden plate passed as "dinner". Another passed as "breakfast". It looked exactly the same as this except for different meat. The snack box inbetween meals consisted of a small instant noodle cup, an apple and a cookie.

I shoulda brought some Shin Ramyun like I did the last time I flew UA to HKG...along with some Diet Coke.

Any doubt that the TSA is just another government bureaucracy?

I'm at the front of the line with about 150 people behind me. There are two open checkpoints.

Stop, make that one open checkpoint. Despite the frumpy hordes behind me in line, they close the checkpoint anyway.

It's just like the customer service "commitment" that the post office or the DMV has.

Meaning none.

Next up: a 14 hour flight on a packed 747-400 to HKG...

the tough go to Asia!

I'm back in HK and Tokyo for the next 12 days.

Hopefully will scout around the expat job market, eat some good food, take in some scenery and relax. Because it gets busy after I get back.

The flight over will be difficult...I'm on UA and have a bulkhead seat. In steerage! Bleagh!