2014 Vacation: Japan and Taiwan, Part I - Arrival and First Observations

And now, for a break from the Clan's China Adventures!

China celebrates it's National Holiday on October 1. However, unlike the weak one or two days off that other countries get on their National Holidays (e.g. Independence Day), most Chinese get to take seven straight days off. This was actually a proactive move by the Chinese government to encourage its citizens to take longer trips and boost domestic tourism. The move worked - these long 7-day holidays generate the largest human migrations on the planet as millions of Chinese either make trips to their hometowns or take vacations to see the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, or the Terra Cotta Army. As a result, it's actually crazy difficult to plan vacations within China during the long holidays (or any holidays, for that matter).

The fireworks that we didn't get to see this year

Therefore,  for our first National Holiday in China, we decided to leave the country (and, sadly, miss what undoubtedly would have been a fantastic display of fireworks over the Huangpu River). Destination? The Land of the Rising Sun - Japan!

The kids were a little scared of the see-through floor in the play-area of Shanghai Airport

This is one of Shanghai Airport's best ideas ever

Looking at planes

You know you're in Japan when you're greeted by a poster like this one!

After arriving at Kansai International Airport, we managed to navigate our way to buy train tickets to get to the ancient capital of Japan - Kyoto.

Japan Observation #1: We were quite surprised to learn that pretty much no one in Japan speaks English - even at hotels and train stations. It was the first time in my life that I haven't really had any ability to communicate with anyone - in my previous travels, I'd always been able to get by using a combination of English, Chinese (or a variant of it), or Spanish (in Central America and Southern Europe). Now I know what it feels like when my co-workers come to China!

Japan Observation #2: Upon getting into the hotel room, we found everything to be very compact and tiny - a trait that, as it turns out, is fairly characteristic of urban Japan. For example, the chairs and sinks are all very short, short enough that Fifi was able to comfortably sit in them and reach everything without our help!

The hotels come with these awesome robes

Ready for action!

These powered toilets are also very common in Japan - you can get addicted to washing your butt...

For our first excursion, we took the train from Kyoto Station to another ancient capital, the nearby city of Nara.

Japan Observation #3: Japan is clean. Like, impeccably clean. What's more curious is that there appears to be very few (read: none) street sweepers that are picking up after everyone, and what more, there are very few trash bins in public areas. Yet, it is almost impossible to find any trash, be it plastic bags, pamphlets, cigarette butts, bits of paper, etc., in the streets at all! Even smokers were few and far in between. We could only conclude that Japan's cleanliness was, as advertised, a direct result of the people taking responsibility upon themselves to keep their country clean - a stark contrast from our experience thus far in China, where people spit in the streets and toss garbage anywhere they feel like it (because usually there are street sweepers to pick up the mess). We would also later learn that much of Japan has designating smoking zones where smokers do their thing, and no, it's not in every bathroom in the country - in Japan, they mean it when they say no smoking in the bathroom. The Japanese take their cleanliness so seriously that they have a vehement dislike for shoes on surfaces that are not meant for walking... outside. When we were on the train, an elderly gentleman expressed unhappiness when Baby Lukas' shoes were touching the bus seats (since his legs, you know, don't reach past the seat)... This was perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Japan that we observed.

Kyoto Tower watches over Kyoto Station

Note how ridiculously clean it is - especially considering that it's a train station!

Seven Elevens (and similar convenience stores) grace train stations and street corners everywhere in Japan

Mini-observation: Beer (and cigarettes) can be had straight out of vending machines - no carding needed. In fact, pr0n is also readily available on public television and at newsstands... no photos of that for you today, though!

After a short and clean train ride, we arrived in the city of Nara, where we hopped on a bus to see the sites around the famous Nara Park.

Japan Observation#4: Transportation is crazy expensive in Japan. Our 2 minute taxi ride from the train station to our hotel cost 600 Yen (about 6 dollars), compared with a typical 10-14 RMB (about 2 dollars) for a similar ride in China. Bus tickets seemed to start at around 150 Yen (about $1.50 USD), compared with starting prices of less than 1 RMB (15 cents USD) in China. And, when we would later take the famous Shinkansen bullet train to Tokyo, it cost over 10000 Yen per ticket (over $100 USD) - a similar ride in China (which has a faster bullet train) would run around 200 RMB (or $30 USD)!

Buses in Japan are very clean and very expensive. They're also a little confusing the first time around, as you pull a ticket which will let you know how much you owe if you want to get off at the current stop. You're expected to have the fare ready before you get off, in exact change, and there is a change machine at the front of the bus.

Nara was the capital of Japan in the 8th century, but today it's a fairly humble (by Asian standards) town of around 350,000. Today, it's famous for its park (and its free-roaming deer) and its numerous Buddhist and Shinto temples and shrines. Our primary sightseeing was the park and the Kasuga Shrine, where we even witnessed a Shinto wedding!

Deer are everywhere in Nara

A Shinto wedding procession. Note the stone lanterns lining the path - during special festivals of the year, all of these lanterns are lit!

Buying Shinto amulets

We concluded our day in Nara with Japan's favorite food - noodles!

Beef Curry Udon

Tofu-Wrapped Udon

Kyoto Tower by night

A water dance that plays each night by Kyoto Station

Up next, the port city of Kobe and more!

Miracle of Life

More NatGeo experiences in my driveway recently! I happened to witness this earthworm birth last Friday morning:

Kind of gross, but amazing nonetheless! I seem to recall from high school biology class that earthworm anatomy is strikingly similar to human anatomy, despite obvious differences in form factor, size, and (presumably) mental capacity. But I had no idea that they actually gave live births!

Big Baby Duck Still Chugging Along

We've been keeping tabs of Big Baby Duck, who is starting to look more and more like a regular duck every day. On this particular day, there were several NatGeo-worthy moments that made me wish I had a better camera on hand:

A heron gobbles up a fish from one of the inexplicably shallow fish nests in the pond

Big Baby Duck on the left - mean Mother Duck and what's left of her brood on the right

I really wish I had a better camera on hand for this shot - it's Mother duck chasing Big Baby away again, with an egret watching the commotion nearby...

I also saw the smallest softshell turtle I'd ever seen on this day, but by the time I got close enough to confirm what it was, it had ker-plunked into the safety of the water!

Staying Tough

In this day and age, especially for those of us fortunate enough to mostly struggle exclusively with first world problems, we often forget how tough the world can be. Shortly after returning to work last month, Bill introduced me to the ongoing saga of "Big Baby Duck", who, as it turns out, can serve as an inspiration for perseverance and learning how to adapt.

Each year, right around this time of year, we see a few broods of ducklings rise and fall in the pond in the middle of our campus. It's really rather incredible - these broods typically start numbering over a dozen ducklings following their mother, but within a few days, most of the little guys will have already disappeared. I don't really think I've ever seen any of them make it to full adulthood. While the pond seems like it would be a pretty secure little ecosystem for the ducks, there are definitely some hazards, including large turtles that patrol the waters, an osprey that has made its nest high above on one of our test antennas, and blue herons.

Avid readers will recognize this amazing shot of a poor duckling's fate we captured in Lakeland two years ago...

Big Baby Duck is an interesting story because he (or she?) seems to have the opposite problem. Somewhere down the line, Big Baby got separated entirely from his brood - all of his brothers and sisters disappeared, but more curiously, his mom disappeared as well. Since then, he's been a lone wolf in the pond.

The particular episode I'm recalling today really struck a chord, however. One day, on the way to the cafeteria, we spotted Big Baby across the pond, but we also passed by a new brood of ducklings with their mother. We must have startled the family of ducks, because the mother duck started to lead her ducklings into the water:

A new brood

Big baby duck spotted the family moving out and decided that he should try to file in and get an escort from the new family. However, as soon as he filed in, the mother duck would pound on him to chase him away! He tried two or three times on the way to the shore, and even once on the shore, before he finally gave in and paddled away. Yet another of nature's sad, "such is life" spectacles right in front of our eyes!

Since then, we've monitored the duck situation in the pond. Predictably, the new brood has dwindled down from the nine that we saw at first to just two, but Big Baby has clearly learned his craft, finding camouflage in the sandy banks of the pond and having just enough go power to escape potential predators. He's now big enough to swim right past those big bad blue herons with little to fear!

Feed the Birds

Bonus points for readers that can guess the tribute of this post's title!

One of the nicest things about where we live is the abundance of birds that might be considered to be rather exotic in less subtropical paradises. This is especially true as the weather gets cooler. Each day, Fifi goes out into the back yard to the pond (with Daddy or Mommy of course... do not let your kids wander off towards a pond by herself!) to feed the ibis, herons, and cranes that stop by our home during the winter months!

Sometimes, she gets cravings for the pieces of bread she's serving up and decides to just gobble them up herself!

Some photos and panoramic shots of our pond after the break:

Notice Fifi's new hairdo? She was always pulling off her pigtails so Mommy decided it would be easier to just cut her bangs to keep her hair out of her eyes:

Until next time!

Forward!

Yet more Local Treasures

In my latest post, I talked about finding fun things to do locally. Today's post continues on that theme, partially because I need to write happy thoughts after the Gators lost to Georgia this past weekend, and partially because we found a few more local treasures this weekend!

Fifi's always ready to have a good time!

The first local treasure we explored this weekend was the Downtown Produce grocery store. Our neighbor SaRah promoted it on her Facebook page, and thereafter I started noticing signs in town advertising the place. Perhaps the one other factor that drew me to Downtown Produce was noticing that I saw a truck for it almost every day, which, to my simple mind at least, indicated that the store got fresh incoming goods very often.

Fresh food! Yes!

Downtown Produce certainly didn't disappoint when it came to the fresh food. They have an impressive assortment of fresh vegetables that both look beautiful and are competitively priced. Typically, we would get our produce at a local Asian food store called Jason's Best Produce, which had very competitive prices and also had a fair selection of Asian vegetables that simply aren't available in most other grocery stores, Downtown Produce included. However, to be frank, sometimes the quality at Jason's was not really up to snuff. In general, Downtown Produce has a little less in the area of specifically Asian veggies, but it has a huge selection of other stuff, including meats, cooked goods, wines, cheeses, and a deli, at prices that were comparable or slightly higher than Jason's, but significantly lower at my favorite chain supermarket, Publix.

Downtown Produce has a beautiful spread of food

It also has a very home-town feel to it, and was packed on the Saturday morning we visited!

After the devastating loss to Georgia on Saturday, the fam and I were determined to have a good time on Sunday.

I feel for ya, Jordan, I really do...

I'd heard my photographer friends rave up and down about a place nicknamed the Viera Wetlands. For whatever reason, I always think of Viera as being this place that is sooo far away. In reality, it's about a 20 minute drive, which isn't far at all, and definitely gives the place eligibility as a "local treasure". So, on Sunday, we decided to go and see what the fuss was all about, especially seeing as how the weather had cooled down quite a bit (the Florida sun has a way of ruining days spent at wide open areas like wetlands...)

It was a beautiful day for a hike in the Wetlands!

We got there kind of late in the morning, which, in retrospect, made it kind of a shoddy day for good photography with my DSLR (you typically want some more overcast for photography purposes as bright, sunny days tend to end up with photos that are either washed out or features that are very dark in the shadows). But on the flipside, the colors were actually quite good, and the "Full Focus" camera on my Nokia Astound did a great job of capturing the day:

Washed-out shot, but still cute

We didn't see any gators on this particular hike...

Forward!

Ducks, taken with my Canon Rebel XSi

Wetlands are always good for bird-watching

Panorama from my Nokia Astound - one of my favorite features of the phone

Ducks, taken with the Nokia Astound. The camera phone tended to get the colors better than the DSLR

Coincidentally, we ran into my boss at the tail end of the hike, who was also visiting for the first time for a bike ride with a friend! Unfortunately, I was so caught off guard that I didn't think to snap a photo. I did, however, capture the details of our hike with the nifty Sports Tracker app, one of, if not the, favorite app on my phone. Click on "Satellite" to view the terrain of the hike in this interactive widget!

After lunch, we cleaned up the house and then set out for another adventure in the evening. At first, we'd planned to simply go to the playground to wear out Fifi a bit. However, as we were pulling up towards the park, we noticed a huge crowd out by the giant local chapel nearby, and decided to check it out. Turns out, it was the annual Fall Fest, a free community event where families line up cars decorated as Halloween booths and kids go "trick or treating" from car to car. There was also free water, chips, hot dogs, and inflatable rides! The only thing was the waits were incredibly long, but it was still an awesome, and unexpected, local treasure!

Free hot dogs!

Waiting in line to trick-or-treat. Unfortunately, we were caught unprepares and weren't in costume!

This LEGO family was a big hit

Fifi waiting in line to get into the bounce house!

All in all, it was a productive weekend... maybe a little too productive on Sunday, as we were totally beat at the end of the day! We'll have to pace ourselves more in the future!

Relaxing!