Faye's Fantastic Adventures

Keep track of Faye's adventures around the globe...

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Disclaimer...

So, long overdue, I've updated the blog with 2 entries - one for Japan and the other for the couple of weeks in China before that. There are loads of photos and it's taken me all afternoon. Unfortunately China is letting me access blogger (where I update the site) but not my actual blog site, so I've not been able to check the format, spacing, spelling etc. So if some photos are out of place and some words are spelled incorrectly, bear with me. I'm sure the firewall will let me access my site again soon and I'll make any necessary corrections. Until then, enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Much love to you all from me. XXX

Japan: so long and thanks for all the fish!

And boy was there a lot of it! The last two weeks have been spent on Honshu - the main island of Japan. The ferry ride over was a million times better than sea-sickness-prone Faye could ever have hoped for. Our cabin, in the second most expensive part of the boat after the VIP suites, was a large twin ensuite with bath and a semi-private deck. The sea was as flat as a pancake and we spent thirty-six hours reading, sleeping, having baths and generally having a lovely time. The boat was Japanese, complete with the requisite beer and snack vending machines, and the restaurant furnished us with our exciting first tastes of Japan - tonkatsu (breaded pork) for dinner and smoked fish with rice for breakfast - all washed down with lots of lovely miso soup. Konichiwa Japan!


Early on the second morning of our crossing we spied our first islands of Japan. I was so excited -I'd wanted to go to Japan for so long. We landed early at Shimonoseki on the south-western tip of Honshu. There we picked up our trusty rail passes and scurried to the shinkansen (bullet train) platforms. I'm no train spotter but these things are amazing. They look super cool and go so fast - you look out of the window and you feel like the world is on fast-forward! And if you're stood on a station platform when one passes through at speed it gives you a little heart attack.

From Shimonoseki we headed to Himeji - a beautiful castle featured in "You Only Live Twice", stopping along the way to pay homage to the god of Japanese fast-food - Yoshinoya (ah, memories of Sydney). Then we caught another lovely shinkansen to Kyoto, the ancient capital, where we headed out for yummy sushi and some beers.

Loyal readers of this blog will know that so far we've been travelling at a pretty relaxed pace. So that first hectic day in Japan took it out of us. So it is a bit of an understatement to say that we were horrified when we learnt of the cruel evil practice of Japanese hostel owners kicking their guests out between the hours of 10:30 and 16:00!! Someone tell the UN! It's not right. You can imagine yours truly, after not enough sleep, being turfed out to sightsee on demand. I wasn't happy and neither was Pete. Dutifully we joined the hordes of tourists at one of Kyoto's temples but our hearts weren't in it - although I did find the main hall beautiful and was highly amused at being interviewed by a group of Japanese kids for a school project. That evening we revived ourselves in a yakitori (stuff on skewers) bar, knowing full well that the copious amounts of beer would not help us get up in time for the anti-curfew the next day.

Feeling better than expected we headed to Japan's most famous zen garden - which was nice but didn't have the impact I was expecting. Far better were the amazing noodles topped with yummy slices of roast pork that we had for lunch.

After a quick look around a food market packed with unrecognisable foodstuffs we then visited the peaceful Inari Shrine - somehow omitted from the Rough Guide but really really lovely. It has hundreds and hundreds of red torii gates lining the paths and in the late afternoon sun the colours and the light were beautiful.

The next day we'd had enough of history (doesn't take long) and hopped on the train for the bright lights of Tokyo, with a quick spot of Fuji along the way.

We had our first taste of sleeping Japanese style (futon mattress rolled out on the tatami-mat floor with a pillow filled with rice husks) and now I understand why the Japanese are so punctual - no one could ever be late for work as there is no risk of sleeping in on the most uncomfortable bed ever. To forget the pain we went to the New York Bar in the Park Hyatt (of Lost In Translation fame) to meet Pete's mate Ian and enjoy what turned out to be the most expensive night of our entire trip so far - we spent in one night a third of what I spent in an entire month in south-west China! It was pretty fantastic though. The views were stunning and we even managed to spot some celebs (OK, OK, not A-list but Vernon Kay and Tess Daly are still a good spot in my book!)

Unfortunately the pace of the preceding days seemed to catch up with Pete and he fell ill on day 3 in Tokyo. Possibly the most hygienic country on the planet and Pete manages to get a stomach bug. Unlucky! I kept myself busy scoffing sushi at a sushi train (mmm, so nice but some of it is much scarier than the stuff at home) and replenishing my dilapidated wardrobe at Gap and Zara (it had to be done - my jeans, may they rest in peace, had needed repairing twice in the last two weeks). To be closer to the bright lights we moved to a hotel in Shinjuku (one night = roughly 10 nights in the average Chinese hotel for most of our China trip). In Shinjuku we spent a couple of nights just people-watching and trying to spot the most elaborate hair-sprayed bouffant hairstyle... on the boys!

Tokyo really grew on me, I really love it. It's a fantastic place with a real buzz. It has the style of New York crossed with the kookiness of London. My favourite day consisted of a walk in the park in Harajuku, where we saw crazily-dressed teenagers and teddy boys showing off their rock and roll routines , followed by a lunch where I played Wagamama-chef in the cook-your-own yaki soba joint and then we met friends for dinner at a ninja-themed restaurant. Marvellous stuff!

Sadly, Pete was still not feeling 100% but we decided to move on. In search of peace and quiet we headed to the port of Onomichi where we didn't see much but managed to sniff out the liveliest bar in town where we munched on lovely squid and prawn tempura and played scissor- paper- stone with the waiter to get discounts on our drinks.

The next day we went all upmarket and caught a ferry to Miyajima - a shrine island peppered with some lovely expensive Japanese guest houses. Upon arrival we hired bikes and sought out a deserted beach for a dip before lugging our packs past the tame deer around the shrine to our ryokan guest house.

We'd really pushed the boat out here and it was worth it. Our Japanese room had paper screen doors and a low table and we were served a full Japanese dinner in our room. Suitably fish-based, the dinner, which we washed down with chilled sake, consisted of fish & squid sashimi, prawn & fish tempura, fish-flavoured egg custard, strange jelly-type thing topped with fish roe, fried fish, tiny fish-roll aperitifs, octopus salad, little tiny pickled fish, salad, beef & onions cooked on a stove at the table, rice and miso soup. We tried everything but the squid sashimi (raw squid? Maybe next time after I've had more sake??)

After dinner we plucked up the courage to finally brave the sento bath. These are segregated public baths where you strip off, scrub and shower yourself at the side of the huge bath (in view of strangers) and then pop yourself in, all clean, to soak in the bath with the afore-mentioned naked strangers. That is so not British! But, buoyed up by the sake, we went for it and were highly relieved to both find our baths completely empty. Phew!
On our last full day in Japan we woke to heavy rain - quite fitting for our trip to the A-bomb dome and peace museum in Hiroshima. We spent hours in the museum, which was very sobering, and I am now being kept awake at night by the fear that fundamentalist terrorists ever get their hands on an atomic bomb, but enough of that talk. After Hiroshima we caught our last shinkansen back to Shimonoseki. Tired and hungry we went in search of a yakitori bar where we were immediately befriended by the decidedly drunk but totally adorable Yukie, who told us that the cow gut was "AMAZING!", tried to get us to drink sake with a fugu (deadly blowfish) fin floating it it, somehow got us to sing 80s classics to her in the bar (the memory of Pete's rendition of Toto's "Africa" will stay with me forever) and then took us to her flat where we sang to Culture Club, drank more beer and snooped around her Hello Kitty and Miffy-cluttered lovely little flat. Yukie, you're AMAZING!

I really enjoyed my trip to Japan. I loved the quirkiness (girls walking pigeon-toed, railway conductors bowing to everyone as they enter or leave the carriage), I found the cleanliness refreshing after China (toilets you could eat your dinner off that spray water up your bum, beautifully litter-free streets) and I adored the food (sushi, squid tempura, miso soup with clams, tonkatsu, octopus balls, yaki-soba, liver yakitori, mmmm). I won't miss the prices though nor the stress of thinking how much we've spent. So it's a good job that I write this from our beloved China - it's definitely not clean but the food is pretty fantastic and boy is it cheap! It's good to be back!

Songpan - Qingdao: distances, duck pancakes and drinking

After 2 months to get through the single Chinese province of Yunnan in the south west and spending a leisurely four weeks in the province of Sichuan, we seem to have now got a rocket up our arses and in the space of two weeks have passed through four provinces at high speed ending up right at the other side of the country.

After a warming bowl of yak dumplings in Songpan, where I wrote my last entry, we headed to Langmusi - another Tibetan monastery town straddling the provinces of Sichuan and Gansu. The scenery on the bus journey was breathtaking - vast grassy plains ringed by mountains with a huge blue sky stretching forever above. In Langmusi we exerted ourselves and hiked up some local cliffs. This was no mean feat as at 3600m the altitude made me feel around seventy and at one point I was nearly sick but when we reached the top the 360 degree views of the surrounding mountain ranges more than made up for it. After being sunburnt on our hike the next day brought snow so, after checking out the characters in town, we headed to the next stop - Xiahe.

Labrang, in Xiahe, is one of the six most important monasteries in Tibetan buddhism, home to the most important Lama after the Dalai and Panchen Lamas and is full of pilgrims prostrating themselves as they spend hours circuiting the prayer wheels that surround the monastery. Taking all this into consideration I took a guided tour but was quite disappointed. To me the monastery looked pretty similar to the several others we have already seen on our jaunt into eastern Tibet (full of yak-butter statues, scary buddhas and gaudily coloured guardians) and our guide was the most apathetic monk ever, so I didn't really get more of an insight into things. I did, however, find a marvellous yak-butter statue of a were-cow which I'm sure my sister will appreciate.

After all that we left Tibet (probably for the last time on this trip as I'm a bit Tibet-ed out now) to catch an overnight train to Xi'an. Getting back to Han China and its fantastic food was great. Getting back to trains after two and a half months of knee-crushing, ear-splitting bus travel was even better. Ah! To be horizontal. We slept like babies.

Our next stop was the lovely walled city of Xi'an. Our YHA was pure luxury and we were delighted to sniff out a duck restaurant serving Peking duck pancakes on the street at around 15p a pop. Apart from eating we managed to fit in some culture too with a visit to the fantastic terracotta warriors. Pah to all those people we've met who said they were disappointing. Where were you looking? My favourites were the horses, of course, and the poor buggers who hadn't yet been restored.

We also hired bikes and cycled on the top of the wall, which was pretty nice.

From Xi'an we caught another overnight train to Qufu - home to Confucius (but he was out when we got there). I loved this place. It was really small but I think that the small places are the best. It's easier to sniff out the heart of a small town and Qufu had more heart than most in its amazing food market with stalls of all sorts stuffed into the streets. We wandered from one to another trying each one's specialities to make amazing meals for about 50p (although we avoided the dog-meat stalls with their smiling canine skulls). It was in said market that we were befriended by Xu from Harbin who invited us to join him and his friends at their table where they gambei-ed us lots with beer ("gambei" means "cheers" but literally means "drain your glass" so each time it's said everyone has to down their drink) and we all ended up getting very drunk and playing pool until the early hours.

In contrast to the joys of the market (which even provided us with 1am jaozi-dumplings to ward off our gambei-induced hangovers) there was also a lot of history in Qufu. We visited the Confucius Temple, which was nice, but I think Pete and I are more interested in real life than ancient Chinese temples to be honest so we didn't spend long there!
We took another train from Qufu to Qingdao (the east coast port which is home to the famous Tsingtao beer) and we were lucky enough to have a compartment to ourselves, which was luxury. We also treated ourselves to our staple meal in China - qingjiao rousi, or pork and green chilli to you and me - in the buffet car.
Qingdao was to be our last port of call in China before Japan and the two days we spent there were taken up with sorting rail passes and ferry tickets so there is not much to say about it right now. We will be returning there after Japan though so I expect I'll get to try the beer there if nothing else!

I must end this entry with a mention of the amazing food we've been scoffing recently just so I don't ever forget: jaozi (ravioli dumplings filled with pork meat steamed and served with a chilli and vinegar dip; stewed pork and green peppers served in a warm naan-like bun; Peking duck pancakes; muslim pancake-bread filled with pork and spring onions; fresh thin salty bread torn into strips and served with chopped spring onion; deep-fried sesame pork with crispy deep-fried red chillies; piles of steamed wilted Chinese greens served cold with a sesame dressing; cold fresh noodles served with a soy and sesame dressing; discs of fried aubergine stuffed with sausage meat. Mmmmm. China.