Life in Japan

Happy Birthday To You!

Our baby girl, Kristina, celebrates her birthday today.  We even lit the candles on these cupcakes, blew them out and made a wish for you.  We wish we could be with you to celebrate today! (Oh, well I do wish that, but that’s not what I wished for when I blew out the candles.  That’s a secret and you know if I tell my wish it won’t come true :)  So..from birth to Boston we have loved you everyday.  We hope you have a wonderful day and know that we will always love you.

Welcome to the World Baby Girl

Boston!!!!!!

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Last Friday we took an afternoon flight to Seoul.  Saturday we headed to the Jongmyo Royal shrine first followed by a visit to the Chandeokgung Palace.  The palace can only be visited on a tour.  Our tour guide reminded me of my dear friend in London, Nancy Bali.  She had Nancy’s long dark hair and except for her very Asian eyes looked like her.  I think is was the way she firmly told us that we were only allowed to take her picture in a certain place in the garden that reminded me of Nancy.  She used the same tone of voice and choice of words that Nancy would have used.

Palace Tour Guide

After the palace we went to Namdaemun Market.  On the map it said that it was a special tourist zone.  This worried me a bit because I am definitely uncomfortable in situations where I am bombarded by people trying to sell me things.  In China they were actually coming up and grabbing my arm and trying to convince me to buy what they were selling.  A very old woman actually put a curse on me.  The problem I had was not having enough money in small denominations to buy from all of them.  How do you choose who to help?  Next time I will be better prepared.

Anyway, this market was not like that at all.  The vendors would clap their hands to get your attention and then call out what they had for sale.  There was no following me or grabbing me.  However, I didn’t buy anything.  I saw more pairs of shoes and interesting articles of clothing than I could imagine. Everything imaginable was on sale at this market. 

We ate lunch at the top of a department store in this area.  As we walked around the food court to see what are options were a women working at on of the stalls showed us her menu and told us one of the dishes was chicken.  Chicken was the only word she knew in English.  It was a bowl of soup and we chose the set which meant it came with rice and other dishes (all the other dishes were kimchee).  I always thought that kimchee consisted of cabbage with a very spicy red sauce.  Along with cabbage, we also had bean sprouts, something that tasted like cucumber but was in much larger chunks and something that tasted fishy, all with the same spicy red sauce.  My surprise was that my bowl of soup contained and whole chicken.  Rick ordered a different soup and we think it had beef in it.

My Chicken Soup

Rick's Lunch

Our next stop was the Dongdaemun Market which was much of the same, so we didn’t stay long.  We headed back to the hotel and I ended up taking a nap and dozing and reading the rest of the evening.

Sunday we woke up early and made our way across town to attend the Military District’s Conference.  It was a good meeting and I was especially touched by the testimony of a French speaking sister from Cameroon.

That afternoon we went out to see a little more of the city.  We saw some men dressed in traditional clothing after performing a changing of the guard ceremony at Deoksugung Palace. 

Changing of the Guard

While in Seoul, I only saw one McDonalds and one Burger King.  I am sure there may be a few more but they are definitely not as popular as they are in other countries I have visited.  There are many Starbucks and they seem to have almost as many Dunkin Donuts as Boston!  (This photo is for you Kris)

Dunkin Donuts

Then we walked through Itaewon a market area frequented by foreigners (they sell large size clothes and shoes).  After swarmas and ice cream we headed back to our hotel.  It was a great weekend.  It was fun to get around only on the subway system.  We didn’t take one taxi!

Autumn in Seoul

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Xian

We left Tokyo on October 2 for Beijing.  We met up with our good friends, Dan and Dee Jones at Narita Airport.  Upon arrival in Beijing our tour guide, Wendy, and our driver took us to our hotel.  On the drive in she told us about herself and then mentioned that because it was a holiday week there were 7 million domestic visitors in Beijing.  We saw many of them as we toured around Beijing on Friday and Saturday.  Friday we began with a visit to Tiannanmen Square and Wendy informed us that everyone got their picture taken near the picture of “Chairman Mao.”

Picture with Mao at Tiananmen Square

Temple of Heaven

Temple of Heaven Gate

After a visit to a silk factory we went back to the hotel.  We ate dinner that night at a Taiwanese restaurant.  Saturday we were of to one our our most anticipated destinations, the Great Wall.  It was quite a drive to get there, but we enjoyed the scenery and the small towns we drove through.  It was cloudy, but the rain didn’t really start up until we were almost down.  From the parking lot we climbed a hill and quite a few stairs to get to the tram.  The tram ride took just a few minutes and imagine our good fortune to be able to ride up in the tram car that took Bill Clinton to the top when he visited !!!!  It actually gave us that information on the window of the car.  At the top we had a great view of the wall.  We walked along it and climbed up into some of the look out towers.  It was incredible and such a beautiful part of China.  Here are some pictures….

Great Wall

Rick on the Great Wall

Me on the Great Wall

The Great Wall

Wendy told us that we needed to have Peking duck while we were there and so we asked her to make a reservation for us.  We had two choices, the one that most tourists go to or the local one.  We chose the local one and invited her to come along with us.  Everything was duck!! Duck served a million , well not a million maybe 10 to 15 different ways.  I generally choose not to eat duck yet I really liked most of the dishes.  Duck soup has something to be desired, though.  The sweet and sour duck was delicious, probably because the sweet and sour sauce masked the duck flavor.  It was a good meal, we had a private dining room and were the only foreigners there.

Sunday was a day of rest.  We met with one of the English branches in the morning and had some down time in the afternoon.  That evening we had dinner and walked around the area near the hotel.

Monday we visited the Lama Temple and the Summer Palace and I was commenting how I liked these two locations the best.  In the end I decided that all the domestic visitors had gone home on Sunday and by Monday it wasn’t as crowded.  That’s why I liked them best.

Lama Temple

Street near the Lama Temple

Scene from Summer Palace

The Long Corridor

After Beijing we flew to Xian.  After checking at the Shangri-la Golden Flower Hotel, we went to see the city wall.  It was quite phenomenal!  The entire wall is intact and the circumference is 14 kilometers.  It is quite wide with guard towers close enough together to cover anyone trying to attack.  It has been maintained really well.  Although the day was very rainy, as you can see in the pictures, we really enjoyed climbing up and looking at this city wall.

City Wall

View From Xian City Wall

The next day we went to see the Terracotta Warriors.  It was quite quite interesting to see the complete excavation.  It’s incredible to think that one man thought so highly of himself that he would cause people to work so hard to create this army to protect him when he was dead!!!  The area that they are found in is huge.

Terracotta Warriors Excavation

The Real Thing!

We ended the trip with a boat ride down the Li River near Guilin and our final stop was Shanghai.  Here are some pictures to finish this incredibly long post:

Guilin, China

Pearl of the Orient Tower Shanghai

One of the fun things we did in Shanghai was to spend Sunday evening with the Allgaiers.  We know them from London.  We enjoyed a delicious meal and had a great time catching up with them.  Their darling girls are growing up so quickly and they seem to be enjoying Shanghai and learning to speak Chinese.

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Fruit Fly Catchers

As much as I dislike bats I was really wishing I had one last week to eat the fruit flies invading our house. It all started on the day we left for China. I was checking the refrigerator and found two cucumbers that would be bad by the time we got back so I tossed them in the garbage can fully intending to empty it on my way to the car. I forgot!

When we got home the house smelled a bit weird, but I wasn’t sure what it was until I opened the garbage can and a swarm of fruit flies flew out. They quickly settled back into devouring the rotting cucumbers and as soon as they had I quickly closed the top of the garbage bag and took the whole thing down to the trash room. Over the next week and a half I would see a few drifting around the house. I didn’t think too much about it until we had a fruit fly population explosion. It seems that the fruit fly egg incubation period is about 10 days. They were everywhere!!!!

So I googled how to get rid of them. There was a handy video that showed how to make a fruit fly trap. This involved a bowl of wine (not an option!!!). At the end of the video it said I could also use apple cider or red wine vinegar. My cider vinegar had expired so I thought that would be a great choice.  First, put a small amount of water in a bowl and add a few drops of liquid dish washing detergent and mix it up gently. Then fill the bowl about halfway with cider vinegar.  The dish detergent does something to the surface of the water that causes them to sink immediately.  Place the bowl in the area where you notice the most fruit flies.

I made one up and literally within minutes I had trapped at least 30. At this point their living friends were sitting on the edge of the bowl and they were not going in.   I am not sure if they could see their buddies floating below or smell death. I am not sure how you could smell death through all that fermented vinegar though :). At this point I decided to empty the first trap and make a new one. They jumped right in!  After the same thing happened three times I had two fruit flies that refused to take the plunge. So I switched to the more expensive fresh bottle of red wine vinegar. The remaining two took the plunge in seconds.  Picky fruitflies!!!  I haven’t seen a fruit fly since yesterday.  With a trap like this, who needs a pet bat???  The big question is did this group lay eggs???  I think I’ll keep a bowl of vinegar out for the next week just in case.

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Recycling Poster

This was in my mail box this morning.  You may remember my post earlier this year that showed my trash can and described all the various categories.  This poster is describing another one, recyclable plastics.  So now I have the following categories; recyclable plastics, non-combustible, combustible, cans, glass, pet bottles, cardboard, newspapers, magazines, milk and juice cartons.  All of these have to be separated and bagged.  The newspapers, magazines, cardboard and milk cartons need to be separated bundled and tied with string.  I have until October 4 to figure out how to do it, actually I have until October 14 since I am leaving for China on October 2.  I intend to head to the 100 yen store this afternoon for my supply of string.  I think I will start now so I can get it right before then.  So while you think I may be complaining the new recyclable plastics category actually saves me from carrying my plastic grocery bags and my styrofoam trays back to the store.  Now, they pick them up for me.

My motivation for doing this is two fold.  First, not doing it right makes more work for the sweet Japanese man who maintains our apartment building.  I know he checks each bag of trash I put downstairs or he will hear from the local officials.  The garbage men check to make sure it is done properly.  Second, I love to think that all this recycling that I do and that Japan does helps the earth.  I also love the fact that the local government sent me three posters explaining the change in both English and Japanese.

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