China and Japan 2016

The last days of our trip were spent in Nanning, the town — the very same hotel — where we first held Anna in our arms. It has been 14 years since that day in 2002, and 7 years since…

This is the longest river in China and the third longest in the world, with the largest dam in the world. There were no permanent bridges across it until 1957; today there are 76 bridges across the Yangtze, including 3…

I find it difficult to convey my awe at the forest of residential high rises that dominate every city in China. Every city, for miles before and miles after we pass through it by train. Row after row after row….

Japan and China are such radically different countries that it’s a real culture shock having gone from one to the other. Before trying to describe the China we are experiencing (with, granted, our own cultural biases), I want to remember…

We arrived in Shanghai two days ago, and I immediately had the sense, à la Dorothy and Toto: We’re not in Tokyo anymore. For one thing, I had to smuggle this post out of China. I use Blogger, a Google…

I held on as long as I could, but to give you a sense of the full sensory overload:   Yet another Pokemon store. This one had just had its “Grand Open” [sic] two days earlier. And also, bunnies (look up…

Our 2-day journey outside of Tokyo was a loop of sorts that involved multiple means of transportation: train, to electric tram that zig-zags up the mountains (2 times it literally pulls into a dead end, they pull a track switch,…

We journeyed outside Tokyo for a couple days. Today we hope to catch sight of Mt. Fuji, clouds permitting. We stayed one night in the historic Fujiya Hotel and had tempura at a delightful little mom-and-pop restaurant where I was…

Our arrival in Tokyo and the usual trek through immigration and customs, search for ATM and train tickets to the city, navigation of taxi stand and journey to hotel went so smoothly I barely felt that we were in another…