BBQ - Hong Kong Style

I am presuming that most of the readers to my blog are fair dinkum aussies who only know of the Aussie way of the Barbie (Beefmaster 6 burner stove where you chuck steaks and prawns onto and consuming over a VB).. Today I will post up some pics of BBQ - Hong Kong style where theres no one single chef, but everyone just cooks their own food basically with forks and an open fire.

We basically took a trip out to the rural side of Hong Kong (New Territories, Tai Po) for a barbie that has been "prepared" by the site owners - you basically have to pay a fee for whatever meats you want to order and cook it yourself (or get someone from the joint to cook you a piglet even - for a premium, of course!)

Was such a ball since I caught up with most my cousins here. Ethan was running around the place with his little cousin and taking turns at riding the bike.. :)

Hong Kong scenary

As I have said in earlier posts: I have not had too much time these days to put up new posts for the Hong Kong / Macau / China leg of the trip since I have to look after the family as well as meeting up with schedules and visiting everyone else as well.

Here are some HK (Kowloon) pics I have taken of the harbour when I was picking up the family (from the Macau to HK Ferry Terminal in Sheung Wan).

Back to Hong Kong

Tuesday 20th April: Today is the finale for the Japanese leg of our trip. We basically spent the morning going through evaluating Japan and talking to each other about various aspects of the trip including whether or not we shall return. My summary of it was this: Japan is a fantastic place to visit and that this trip will not be my last (for I have promised the wife to take her to Hokkaido on our 10th Wedding anniversary). But the for most part, the "Mecca" that we all have longed to visit is just that - something that we yearned for more and more, but when we got there, it really is another Asian country (most polite country too). The experience had been fantastic and we all thoroughly enjoyed it - but at the end of the day, I guess we have dreamt Japan up to be semi mythical place that maybe had set the standards too high.

We spent the remainder of our time going back to the heart of Tokyo to us - Shinjuku and had the final meals and did our final bit of exploring and shopping (well, went to Bic Camera again - the Japanese counterpart to my employer in Australia). We left to go back to the hotel after midday to pick up our luggage and head off to the airport for our 5 hour trip to Hong Kong.

Ended up taking the wrong train (not the Narita express - but the standard JR line which stopped at nearly every goddamn station) but still got there. I guess there is a sigh of relief since this trip has been rather exhausting and rushed to visit so many places. I was most eager to get back to see the family and the kids especially since I have not seen them for over 6 weeks.

Flight back was pretty peaceful and we even got to view Taipei from the night sky on the way back (pretty damn awesome, but cant take the pic since the double glass is crap on the lens).

Arrived in HK about an hour late - and immediately we were greeted with the typical Monsoonal HK weather of humidity. We were basically drowning in our own sweat and the air was almost not breathable due to the vapours. Thank god for airconditioning though.. hahaha

Family arrives into HK tomorrow and have a very packed scheduled along the next few weeks catching up with relos, inlaws and friends (where possible)... :)

Train trip back to Tokyo and shopping

Monday 19th April: The end of our trip looms closer as we spent the morning taking the Shinkansen bullet train back to Tokyo. We basically checked out early in the morning, had some breakfast and went to the New Osaka station to change trains. Parting thoughts of Osaka are that if you have never been to Japan, want to experience the culture and shopping along with cheap airfares (Jetstar flies here for cheap), then this is the place to go. Its not quite as formal as Tokyo and in some ways more western in culture, but its still a nice spot to go.

The trip back was pretty interesting as the train was pretty much booked up with people. Originally there were seats available and I wanted to move to the left to ensure a strategic seating for Mt Fuji pics - but kept constantly kicked out of my seat whenever we came to a new station. Anyway, still managed to get some pretty cool pics of the most photographed mountain in the world apparently.

We got back to Tokyo at midday and changed back to the Subway to go to our hotel for the last night (Grand Prince Hotel) which was ironically just across the road from where we previously stayed (New Otani). Once we were there, we basically split up once again to complete our personal agendas (shopping, visiting any missing sites, eat whatever you want etc). Tom and Kalin had lunch together but I decided to head off first to do my rounds of shopping (gifts for the family).

My first stop was to go back to Shibuya and tracing back to the Burberry Blue shop that we visited and also to have lunch (Ramen - with a super thick soup/sauce that was done using a compression oven/boiler to extract all the pork essence out.. YUM). If you are after luxury goods, Burberry Blue is a special division of Burberry specific for the Japanese market and with specific products for Japan that is not available anywhere else. Its good to get since its made in Japan and is considerable less than the full Burberry branded stuff. Walked all the way up to Harajuku (mainly all girls wear stuff) to get to the JR station. Since I have my JR pass, all JR trains are already paid for and then took the JR train over to Akihabara across the other side of town (like 15 stops or something stupid). Took a seat and managed a nozz before getting to Akihabara for some electrical good shopping.

The next stop was Ginza to look around (as you have noticed, I have basically gone back to all the spots that were originally affected by the rain in my initial visits). Went to various shopping places including the Sony Flagship store to check out the 3D TVs (see pic) before making my way back to Akasuka for dinner and the hotel.

Dinner was particularly interesting since it was an 8 course meat with various parts of beef available. Firstly there were some entree starters including beef liver shashimi. I dont like innards - let alone liver, but I took the plunge (thinking about my hero, Bear Grylls thinking its just protein) and to my surprise, it was quite nice for something that was semi bloody, dipped in soy vinegar and had laced with traditional mustard. The next course had Ox tongue that had been wind dried for a month in a BBQ kebab style (that was pretty yummy too) before having some less exotic main meals. The trip was complete with me eating the most bizarre things! :) The end of the meal was basically a Sakura (cherry blossom) flavoured Ice cream to remind me of the pink florals around the entire Japan.

Anyhow, one more day to go and off to Hong Kong.

Lack of posts even though I am in HK?

Yes.. I know I am behind on these but not quite as free at the moment with the family! Posting up more stuff to end the Japan leg of the trip (last two days). Stay tuned..

BTW.. I am in Hong Kong now as you can imagine. Hong Kong is a rather personal part of the trip to meet up with family and friends. I will put some occasional posting in here to show the landscape and scenery if anyone is interested.

Osaka Football and shopping

18th April 2010: Sunday - This whole day was spent on Osaka where we went over to Osaka Castle in the morning and then to watch a J-League game in the afternoon to make up for the planned game in Tokyo. The Castle was quite nice to visit and gives a good view of Osaka and the surrounds. Would really recommend going in the Sakura season for this since there are many blossom trees planted around the castle (about 2-3 weeks earlier would have been nice with full bloom).

The J-League game was rather interesting with two bottom end teams battling for goals. Nice environment and atmosphere and if you can, this should be a good to go (although non-soccer fans would be struggling to stay awake). The japanese are pretty hardcore fanatics, so it is rather interesting just to see them play big bongo drums and singing their team song (Osaka... Osaka.. blah.. Osaka...)

The last part of the day was splitting up the group to do particular things that we wanted to do ourselves in Osaka. Since I have never been, I decided to go to this place called "Den Den Town" which is also famous for Electronics. Den Den Town's real name is Nipponbashi (dont ask me why, but seems like every major city has a suburb/district of this name). Was pretty disappointed with this as it was smaller and not as good as Akihabara which in turn is not as good as HK PC megacomplexes such as Golden in Sham Shui Po.


Anyhow, here are some photos of the day:

Kyoto - City of Shrines and Temples

Saturday 17th: Woke up in the morning with a nice clearing sky which confirmed it was a good day. We decided to spend the morning washing our clothes (as we are fast running out) and then make short trip to Kyoto from Osaka. It was lucky that the hotel at Osaka offers free internet access (which is where this blog is coming from) and through the powers of google and google maps, we eventually located one not too far from the hotel (about 1km or so). After dropping the clothes in, we took the train to Kyoto and arrived there after 12.

Our original intentions was to ride around Kyoto to cover the distances since the city is not exactly small and distances between attractions was quite large. Basically the day was spent riding around the city to various temples and checking out the tourist attractions available. By the time we had lunch and made our way to the old palace, it was already 4:30pm and they had closed by that time (giving us only a pic of the outskirts). Also visited the imperial gardens nearby and then rode back to the station to drop off the bikes.

We did not find a place to eat Kobe steaks, so Tom was a bit disappointed and we ended up eating some cheap Noodle meals and combos (although they just came back from their night drifts and apparently ate Whale blubber..hahah).

sounds like a short day? not really. Getting a little sick (runny nose, sinus etc) along with a damaged leg and foot from the walking and riding (nearly stacked it three times today at various locations).

Anyway.. enjoy the pics.. tomorrow is an Osaka day hopefully.

Train day!

Fri 16th April: Slept overnight at the onsen on traditional Japanese Tatame style of bed (on the straw mat floor, with a thick layer for the bed and a thick blanket). Woke up in the morning at 6:30 and we all decided to make the most out of our money by going for another dip before we head off. It was quite literally freezing outside, but this did not deter us from going to the hottest pool in the whole Onsen one last time. We noticed that there was something in the air and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was in fact, snowing (very small partially melted flakes, however). That really topped out trip to see snow (and snowing) at a Japanese onsen.

I did say no pics - but could not resist going down to take some (since everyone was at breakfast and no one was at the springs.. perfect opportunity for photo shots)!

After eating a traditional Japanese breakfast (Japanese actually eat rice for breakie), we set off on a bus trip back to the JR train station and the 3 hour 20 minute trip back to Ueno in Tokyo. We then changed over to the Tokyo to Osaka Shinkansen (bullet train) for the 3 hour trip to Osaka.

Shinkansen ("New Iron line" official name of the bullet train services) is an extremely fast train service that goes between major metro centres of Japan. It did not disappoint me at all and when I put my Phone (running Garmin) against the window to check the speeds, we were quite literally going at 260+km/h to our destination. Since our pass was only a standard, we could take any JR (Japan Rail) train except for the fastest Shinkansen (which is clocked at over 320km/h and cuts the trip by 30 min or so). The distance from Tokyo to Osaka is roughly about the same as Brisbane to Sydney, so imagine only taking 3 hours to get to Brisbane! The trains was running so fast, that even my SLR pics blurred when I focused on things close (although the far away objects are ok as you can imagine).

We got to Osaka at around 6pm (total trip was around 8 hours between the stops) and the next challenge was to figure out how trains worked here. Osaka has a "City circle" that basically runs around the city in both directions. If you make a mistake (like us), we ended up at Universal Studios! We eventually found our hotel, went down to get some food (some Omlette mixed with sauce that Tom wanted). Then went around Osaka to visit the shops (since most closed late).

Shops in Osaka are layed out very weirdly with mega long shopping facilities (basically one street that is a couple of km's long but have a roof). Just goes on forever, but was interesting. Was also interesting to find that there were heaps of these young japanese Guys and girls on the street too who are willing to become your BF/GF (for a fee of course).

Anyhow, the weather was crap - rain after rain. Depending on weather, tomorrow may be Kyoto with the bike ride.