Trip 2008 （３）

Finally arrived in Japan.



I had a haircut on my last day in ＨＫ. One of the most expensive haircuts I ever had. This stylist do the hairs for a lot of HK celebrity, and my friend introduced his services to me. He cut my hair really short and gave me a discount as well. Even with the discount, it is still excessive, but at least the atmosphere of the place (at IFC) makes it worthwhile. I also met up with my the mother of my friend, and had lunch at the famous Tai Ping Koon. The souflee was so massive that we did not even finish half of it. At night, met up with a friend and his partner at Soho, and we had a quick drink. It was interesting to see so many new bars and clubs opened in that area.

I was also confronted with some personal temptation this day. It shows how weak we are and that I really needed God to really help me.



The next morning, I had to catch the plane to Japan. I woke up later than expected, and instead of catching the bus to the airport, I caught the taxi to Tsing Yee and then the train to the airport. The food on the plane was really bad, again. I must lodge a complaint to Cathay for the quality of food they serve. The satay beef tasted like leftovers from three days ago. The plane food on Cathay used to be better than this. I wonder what happened.

Arrived in Osaka in the afternoon, and after taking a bus to the city, checked in at the hotel. My travel buddy and I went up to the Floating Observasation Garden and took in the splendid view of Osaka. Later that night, we headed down to Namba, and the famous Dotombouri, where we tasted the famous giant crab. The crab set dinner was very filling and was terrific. We also tried taking pictures of some of the nice girls, and I even got my picture taken with one. We walked around for quite a while, and we passed some strip clubs and brothel places, and it was so funny that they thought we were Japanese and invited us in, and once they found out we weren't, they were no longer interested in asking us.

The second day, we went to the Osaka Castle, and experienced the majestic nature of the castle, with the high moats and fortifications surrounding it. Saw some cherry blossom too, which was great. Then we headed off to lunch at Kobe and had the famous Kobe beef. The chef did so many variety with it, and cooked it in so many different ways. From the simple steak, to the use of fats in dishes and the use of other vegetables. Then off to Himeji we went. The bad thing about this day was that we had to carry our bags around, but it wasn't too bad. At Himeji station, there were lockers to put our bags in, and we thought at first they only had small lockers (and we tried to stuff our big bags into those at first) , only to find out that there were larger ones elsewhere in the station. It was disappointing that we couldn't go into the castle, since we were a bit too late. Hopefully, we can work around our plans and try to go to Himeji again, as the area is really one of the nicest areas I've been to in Japan.

At Himeji, we caught the bullet train to Kyoto. These trains were so fast that I couldn't believe it. Stand at a platform when they travel past, and I can assure you that you wouldn't never stand close to the edge of the platform ever again. We arrived in Kyoto early evening, and we wanted to see the temples being lit up at night (since they were going to do this). We had a hard time working out which bus to catch, and when we were on board, we did not know how to pay for the bus ride. Worse of all, the driver and the passengers did not speak English, and we missed our stop on the first night! What made it worse was that when we got off at the next stop, and tried to find those temples being lit up at night, we were told that we were one day too early. And so we got a bus back to Kyoto station, hoping to find something to eat. But alas, all the restaurants and cafes closed at 10pm. We ended up finding a bar, and we had bar food, which consisted of skewers and fried stuff. I did not know they had an English menu and was ordering from the Japanese menu, trying to guess the food with the Chinese characters used in the menu.

The trip so far has been good, but my impression of Japanese people so far was that they tended to mind their own business and do not really look after other people. However, we did meet some nice people along the way too, and when asking people for directions, most of them were too happy to assist. However, our experience with the bus was really bad, as none of the passengers attempted to help us.