Team T Travels to the Silk Road

After roughly 24 hours of sleeper train travel, we have arrived at the Silk Road, in an oasis city of Dunhuang between the Taklamaken and Gobi deserts.
After arriving into town and chatting with fellow travelers on the bus from the train station, a dumpling house caught our eye and, as dumplings are traditional a breakfast food and we will eat dumplings any hour of the day we settled in for a nice brunch. Justin, Nick and Michele also sampled donkey dumplings, as we had recently learned this type of meat is a local specialty.
Though the city of Dunhuang is way bigger than anything we have in our home state, it had a nice downtown feel. So after exploring around a bit, we settled into a nice courtyard in the night market and had a small lunch and wrote postcards home.

It was a bit of a challenge locating our hostel. Michele had gotten the address and Justin had translated it so a taxi driver could understand it. As we drove out of the beautiful downtown, Nick and I crossed our fingers that our hotel would be near the dunes. Our driver just kept driving farther and farther into the plentiful vineyards and humble farmers huts. The hotel was unmarked and looked nothing like the picture. We checked in with the help of the woman running the little store next door and we wondered if we were even at a hostel, never mind the one we had booked. The hostel does have three resident dogs who are very friendly and lovable, jujubes we are encouraged to pick and enjoy, as well as a herd of sheep and a billy goat.
Later in the afternoon Justin, Nicholas and I went off to see what was happening near by. We walked down a dusty path where you could see the vegetation of our oasis completely come to a halt in an ocean of sand. We noticed after a few moments that we were in a graveyard, complete with tombstones covered in Chinese inscriptions and burial mounds. After a long stretch of flat sand and rock the dunes towered like mountains in the distance. We watched farmers come and go from where the were drying their grapes into raisins along the tombs and we spotted evidence of camels.
We will be here for six days and will make a point to keep everyone up to date on our sand adventures!

Grapes dry in the desert sun

Chinese burial plots

Grapes growing in front of the dunes

The Great Wall and a Great Birthday

To celebrate my 13th birthday yesterday we rose early to get to the Great Wall before the crowds. September 24th was the first annual National Full Moon Harvest Festival so everyone was out of school and work, spending time with friends and family at cultural heritage sites. What I’m trying to say is that it was very crowded. We were on the seven AM train to the wall, trying to catch a few extra minutes of shut eye to make up for the early hours.
The Great Wall, while busy, was spectacular. It was breezy so the warm, bright light of the sun felt good. The blue skies screamed autumn. We hiked the steep steps that wound throughout the mountains until we could go no further. We got some great pictures of the ginormous creation and just basked in the hugeness of it.

It wasn’t until five that we got back to our neighborhood in Beijing. Mom and I had spotted a nice little bakery with some beautiful cakes so we bought a tiramisu cake that made your mouth water just looking at it.
On the way back to our hotel, carrying the cake carefully to avoid little kids brandishing sticks, we saw a large group of photographers taking pictures of what appeared to be a busy road. There were at least 25 with heavy duty exspensive cameras. I wanted to see what was so photogenic and when I stood on the overpass next to them my breath was taken away. Down the street was the most amazing sunset, and sillueted against it was the Temple of Heaven, one of the extravagant temples of the city. It was so pretty.
We spent birthday dinner at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant with the place to ourselves. We had a great view of the full moon and some skyline and eating meat skewers. We spent hours talking and playing dominoes and eventually eating a delicious birthday cake. It was a birthday to remember forever.

A Day At The Forbidden City

The forbidden city, one of the most famous attractions in Beijing. We were four of the over 14 million annual visitors. We admired the exquisite detail and color of the temples and enjoyed the rare blue skies. We also paid a short visit to the treasure museum that show cased the beautiful treasures that aged nicely over the centuries. We all agreed that such touristy, crowded areas were exhausting and retired early back to our hotel room.
The next day was a resting day, despite the gorgeous weather. We studied, read, napped and researched the rest of our trip. We had recently purchased some classic literature at a foreign language bookstore and Justin and Nicholas jumped into “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.” For lunch we went to a great local restaurant down the street serving the Beijing speciality, Peking Duck. Yum. We had filling dishes of the classic duck and pancake with scallions and cucumber, meatballs that were the size and texture of munchkin donuts and pulled it off, candied sweet potatoes and more. We ordered a jujube soup, which turned out to be sweet and slimy. Picture sweet water, perhaps sweated with honey, partly frozen so it was like a slushee. Now imagine that it some how defies logic and is hot. There are saccharine hunks of fruit suspended in the warm slush as well, with two maroon dried jujubes on top. It was definitely a new branch on soup.
This morning we had another lazy day, before going out around noon. We walked along a nice little river. (A nice walkway around a river I wouldn’t recommend swimming in that is) However, many middle aged guys we’re taking turns diving into the murky depths. One man was out in the middle of the channel with a floaty.
We paid a very small entry fee to get into a splendid park around a lake. The island of greenery in a concrete ocean was full of families taking advantage of the ropes course, paddle boats, croquet quarts, kiddie rides, basketball hoops and gardens. A large stone courtyard with coat hangers that could function as goals encouraged Nick and I to start a game of pick up soccer with some local boys. We had a lot of fun and it’s always nice to hangout with some new friends. Tomorrow we will be getting up at 5 am in order to visit the Great Wall of China before the crowds.

Adventurous Eating in Beijing

Thursday we had the experience of visiting Tiananmen Square. It was a bit of an ordeal getting into the square after passing through many security check points, but we made it. We spent a few minutes strolling around the vast stone plaza and enjoying the vibrant flower beds. We missed the display put on by soldiers at sunrise and sunset, but we may get to watch that as we wait to catch a glimpse of the embalmed corpse of Mao Zedong tomorrow morning. (More on that later) when we had our fill of the square we had a lovely walk through a serene little park with a small river as the center piece and many beautiful blossoms and drooping willow boughs. It was a bit of a portal out of the hustle and bustle of the mega city and back in time to an ancient land of gardens and fairy tales. It was very calming. But the park had to come to and end, and it did. We continued down the busy streets monopolized by rickhaw drivers and cyclists until we arrived where we would spend a few hours and a bit more money than we had planned. Wangfujing Snack Street was decreed completely new to us as soon as we laid eyes on the first vendor. A young man had 3 scorpions impelled on a skewer. The eight legged creepy crawlers were doomed to instant death by hot oil before being consumed. After a bit of humming and hawing we decided to go for it. I was the first to try one. Banishing the looming fear of my young getting stung of pinched, I closed my eyes and crunch. No stings and taste like pretty much nothing. Mom and Nick also sampled one but dad passed. We continued to meander down the extra long street packed with people munching on things varying from 8 inch braised lamb shanks to skewered roasted lizards. We also tried Peking duck burritos, Chinese cherries on a stick covered in hard carmel, octopus on a stick, lamb on a stick, tofu in a rather unpleasant 

sauce, an interestingly cut sausage, coconut strawberry ice cream sundae and my personal favorite, snake on a stick. We’d seen this little treat on our way down the street but only steeled the nerve to try it on our way back. I’m not a huge fan of snakes but I wanted to try it, for bragging rights of course, so the guy picked one up and cooked it over the grill with great care before handing it over the counter. Bon appetit. Many passerbys stopped to if the American tourists had it in them. The strip of jerky like meat had hot oil cascading off its scales, and after a second of letting it cool down, I chomped off a piece. It was incredibly hard and crunchy, and we came to the conclusion that we were eating the skin and bones of the snake, not so much it’s meat. We all tried a nibble or so. “It was really dry, and crunchy. It was kind of like eating... a rope.” Nick summarized. “It was beautifully coiled on the stick,” begins Dad. “It was a water snake so it was a bit salty and seasoned in cumin.” We had few regrets about venturing out of our comfort zone, though Nick still wishes he had tried the grilled tarantulas. 

Hello From Qingdao

Friday afternoon we arrived in China, ready for the next leg of our journey to begin. Our ferry from Korea, The Golden Bridge Five, was a bit late due to a late departure from Incheon. We had been instructed to get to the ferry terminal, as the ship pulled up anchor at six. We had a bit of a frantic rush of buying snacks and hailing a cab and arrived on time. Then began the four and a half hours of waiting to go through security. We located our bunks and rushed up to the deck, hoping to watch the boat the harbor. And waiting. And waiting. We enjoyed a nice dinner in the ferry’s cafe and then waited. And waited some more. It took an hour of belting it out in the private Karaoke room before the ship set sail. The views of the glowing city were spectacular.
The next day was spent playing dominos on the deck (Being the only tourists and Nick and I being the only kids, we attracted a lot of attention) and enjoying having nothing but open ocean and fellow boats in sight.
As we waited to disembark the ship, we began chatting with a very nice Chinese couple. New and Loulou helped us navigate the ferry terminal and find the correct bus to get to our hostel. After freshening up a bit we met them for dinner. The extra long metro ride was worth it. We were in a different part of town wrought with street vendors. Delicious smells of searing meats we couldn’t identify and ripe fruit was almost tangible. New halted us at a stall selling... a pancake? The good was a large circular pancake roughly two feet in diameter. It was puffy, probably four to six inches high in some places and kind of airy. A man would hack off a chunk with a heavy clever and then chop the piece into bite sized pieces. We were startled to see our companions pay for their portion with their phones. WeChat is an app that apparently all of China uses for everything. Texting, FaceTime, banking, cash is becoming obsolete and credit cards are practically unheard of! Considering we don’t have a phone with us we may run into some troubles, but we think our unique style will be just fine.
We then learned that you would take the delicious pieces of pancake and dip them in the richest most flavorful broths imaginable. It was nice to meet some locals and get a taste of Qingdao.

Qingdao from the ferry

Nick dominating dominoes

Last glimpse of Incheon 

Tokyo in 36 Hours

Yes it can be done. We arrived after 7 hours by train from Beppu and after settling into our hotel room we agreed to take advantage of our train passes and pick neighborhoods at random to explore. Our first stop was Shibuya, home to one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in the world. We noticed this as we got to the crosswalks outside the train station. Walkers lined up in huge packs to cross the street in all four corners of the junction. The Shibuya crossing has up to 2,500 people crossing at once, and during rush hour, the crowds that walk across the thick lined crosswalks could fill a football stadium. We had to be careful not to get separated in the waves of people. It
definitely had a modern, fun feeling with lots of entertainment and culture around but some of us were a little overwhelmed by all the people and the sensory overload.

We also went to Shinjuku for awhile to see that part of the city as well as the life size Godzilla residing on the top of a building, but our time was brief and our interest limited after a busy day and we wanted to be well rested for our very busy day the following morning.
Originally we had planned to rise before 4 AM in order to get in line to be one of the 80 tourist on-lookers of the well known tuna auctions at the Tsukiji fish market. We instead decided to sleep in a bit when most of us slumbered through the alarm and no one wanted to find transport to the market while they were still half asleep. (There is not a 24 hour train service in Tokyo so good luck finding a taxi driver at that ungodly hour)

For the first time in the trip we split up, with a promise to rendezvous at the Sumo Wrestling tournament, but that comes later.
Nick and mom set off in search of the owl cafe, which judging by their stories, was nearly impossible to find. To hear more about their time there, read our post "The Friendly Animals of Japan."
After a short train ride to Harajuku, the notorious shopping district of Tokyo, dad and I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast people watching and having some good conversation.
We had decided to celebrate my birthday which isn't for a few more weeks early this year while in Tokyo. For awhile I'd been hassling my parents for an upgrade from our outdated Panasonic camera which we got way back on our South America trip, and now I got my wish. We tracked down a 4 story section of a mall, wholly dedicated to cameras, ranging from 60 to thousands of dollars. We didn't have a ton of time, but we picked out a suitable, affordable camera that would be perfect.
I was so excited and thankful to my parents, and hopefully this means better pictures for the blog! We ate a quick lunch before rushing to the Sumo Stadium to spend a few hours watching these traditional and truly unique styles of fighting. (See post "Sumo Smack down")
It was raining quite hard by the time the bouts were over, but thanks to Justin's gift for navigating, we arrived at our sushi restaurant right on time for our reservation. We enjoyed a few plates of rolls and nigiri as well as a mouth watering bowl of sashimi. There were a few pieces deemed UFOs (Unidentified Fishy Objects) that we will probably never know the origin of. There was one sample on the platter that dad could recognize with his chef expertise. Uni. This mixed brown slimy snotty "delicacy" is the reproductive organ of a sea urchin. Believe me, I didn't know that until I looked it up when writing this. It was yellowy brown and custard like, wrapped tightly in seaweed. I ate it just because I should try it, just in case I ended up liking it. Just as the ew, I don't even want to think about it, touched my taste buds, I wanted it gone. Food writers are right in that it tastes like the ocean, all the bad things in the ocean combined. Imagine someone took a net and dragged it along the bottom of the ocean, collecting all the silt and nasty bits as well as rocks and seaweed. OK, now picture them dumping that net into a cauldron with a bunch of rotting fish in it, heating it and stirring until all the horribleness was a chunky paste. Cool, wrap it in seaweed and voila, you have uni. I understand, some people like it, and that is fine with me, I just don't have a taste for it.
It had it's ups and downs, but mostly ups, and in the end it was a great way to spend our last full day in Japan.

Sumo Smackdown

The giants grunt fiercely. All lights, cameras and eyes are on the pale skinned, belt clad warriors. The smack of flesh on flesh is audible from the farthest seat.The crowd roars as the wrestlers grapple for a hold. The strain is visible as 800 pounds of muscles shove with all their might. Sweat streams off the half naked figures after only a few seconds of exertion as spectators stand and scream encouragement. Fat rolls themselves seem to flex with effort as the blue belted fighter gets a grip on his opponents mawashi. The smaller competitors feet are braced against the edge of the ring. With a final shove with enough force to send an ox airborne the turquoise loin clothed wrestler is defeated. The first match of the Tokyo September Tournament is over and if you blinked you would have missed it.

While in Tokyo we had the enormous pleasure to watch a sumo wrestling tournament. We arrived during the second part of the tournament where intermediate, or Juryo (Second highest division) rikishi (wrestlers) would fight. We took some time to familiarize ourselves with the sport, observing the wrestlers and trying to understand their objective. This is what we discovered...
Two rikishi are called to the ring when the previous bout ends. Both wrestlers come to the center of the ring and squat in the center of the circle formed by strips of what we think were rice fibers and clap their hands once. This has spiritual meaning as they are asking for attention from the gods so they don't have to go into battle alone. They then move their arms around to prove they are unarmed. They retreat to their corners of the ring and drink a sip of water  to clear their bodies and return to the center and stomp the clay floor to squash bad spirits before going back to their corners to grab hand fulls of salt. The salt is then thrown into the air which symbolizes purification. They then squat and by some unknown signal ram into each other and the fight begins. The whole religious build up to the actual fight can range anywhere from 2 to 10 minutes. There is often a lot of intimidation put into play during this routine and rikishi often stand up at the last minute to further stall the match and scare their opponent. The bout can be over in one second, or if it is a particularly well matched set of competitors, more like 10 seconds. The goal is to get your adversary to either touch the ground with something other than the bottoms of his feet or step out of the ring. As you can see in the picture above, four black robed judges sit at the North, South, East and West sides of the ring and they decide who is victories. It is a bit of a dangerous position to be in though, on more than one occasion a three hundred pound warrior was pitched into the audience. Ouch!
Later the champions or Yokozuna (Top 42 rikishi of the sport) all entered the ring. They marched one by one onto the raised platform as their names were announced. It was quite a display.

Then the real bouts began. Most of the champion wrestlers were Japanese but there was one man from Bulgaria and another from Russia.
It was an amazing cultural experience to witness and it was incredible to see such feats of strength. 

The Friendly Animals of Japan

Over many days, our family was awed by the bravery of semi wild animals when it came to human encounters.
Halfway through our train trip around Honshu, we stopped at my happy place, rabbit island or as more formally known, Okunoshima.
During World War II the island was used as a manufacturing plant for poisonous gasses to be used on the Allies. The toxins were tested on rabbits, but when the war ended and the factory was shut down, and workers released all the bunnies to run wild on the island. Nowadays, thousands of bunnies call the island home, protected from predators and feed daily by the tourists who often traverse the sunny paths that loop around the small island. We spent the better part of an afternoon feeding crowds of bunnies representing multiple species and soaking up the tan enduing beach views. Best day ever!!!!

After the morning visit to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, we spent the afternoon and into evening exploring Miyajima Island, home to the Itsukushima floating shrine. This classic, orange gate Shinto shrine appears to be floating at high tide, making it a bustling tour group destination. We wanted to photograph the shrine at this time, but we had a few hours check out the Buddhist monasteries on the steep hills overlooking the main village of the island. Prior to boarding the ferry we had been faithful sightseers and read up on our excursion of choice in our trusty Lonely Planet guide book. We had thought little of the quote mentioning "cheeky deer." As soon as we stepped out of the ferry terminal we noticed the four legged, sacred Sika deer roaming lazily down the streets monopolized by humans. "... Please do not feed the deer, they are wild animals. Do not pet the deer..." blared over the loudspeaker, but apparently that message didn't really get though to anyone. Many tourist found a relaxing buck or doe and took selfies with them, but, the herbivores, well actually omnivores if you count their love of paper, had other ideas. We watched one young lady attempt to snap a picture with one but didn't end up getting the shot when her photo buddy tried to eat her hair. One man had a small heard after his ice cream, and a few individual animals followed us more than a few times. It was cute, but also sad to see wild animals so dependent on humans. We got into some of the Buddhist temples just before they were closed to the public for the evening and saw many Sikas in a more natural environment.

A doe and her fawn don't make a signs of being afraid of us as
we stroll by

A pair of deer in front of the Itsukushima shrine

Stone lanterns stand guard at the water's edge

Japanese maple leaves grow outside a Buddhist temple

One Buck really wants whatever is in that white bag dad is holding...

Many small statues depicting the Buddha's disciples are capped in knitted hats

Lastly, one of Nick's favorite parts of the trip, the Owl Cafe. Only him and Mom ended up going to this low profile experience in Tokyo, but hearing their description of it made me wish I'd gone. They could pet over 30 different birds of many species, and even hold one! Nick chose to hold a Western Screech owl by the name of Pot-sticker. At first the staff was hesitant to let a kid interact with their birds of prey, but once they saw how much he loved owls and how much the owls loved him, he ended up getting to hold two. Michele requested "a big one" from the owl menu and was presented a beautiful South American species named Gorilla.

Nick and Michele hold Okra and Gorilla

Pot sticker is determined to get a higher perch

A tiny resident of the cafe

Nick and Okra

Japan has many amazing experiences, but we will always remember the friendly animals as some of the highlights of our time here.

Bathing in Beppu (Kyushu Japan’s Southern West Island)

We spent two nights and a day in the relatively small town of Beppu, a town well known throughout it the Japanese archipelgo for its traditional baths (Onsen) Aside from a few dips in our baths in our hotel, we also visited a sand bath. When I heard sandbath, I thought of what chickens and chinchillas enjoy, but it’s very different and very relaxing.
Upon arrival we were greeted by incredibly happy middle aged Japanese women and given special robes (Yucata) different colors and patterns for men and women along with the only instruction, “no under wear.” We changed into our robes and made the our way outside behind the main building. The sand pit for lack of a better word, reminded me of a garden where humans were the seeds and attendants the groundskeepers. The black sand was volcanic and raked smooth, with tendrils of steam wafting up from the inky earth. We were lead to our plots (I’m sticking with the garden analogy) where we handed over our camera and were told to lay down and rest our heads on a wooden pillow, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. Immediately our yellow robed gardeners began to shovel steamy sand onto us until we were covered up to our necks. The weight and warmth smothered us like moist, microwaved blankets making us truly relaxed. We had great views of the ocean and were warm and dry thanks to a roof over our heads despite the cold rain. Before we knew it our half hour was up and we retreated to our dressing rooms for a soak in the healing mineral waters of the baths.

The steam of hundreds of bathhouses is visible in the clammy afternoon air.  Over 26,000,000
of hot water is pumped out of Beppu every day