The Great Asian Race: Day 9-Day 11

Day 9

I did it, I got a few more days into this post.  I think we started to calm down on our picture taking a little bit.  Day 9 was a split day.  We spent the first half of the day in China, and then rode the train back to Hong Kong to spend New Years Eve with our friends Paul and Susan.  In the morning we just walked around where we stayed at out hotel.

This is just outside, I am in the picture, but you have to look hard.  Yep, right there on the left....

A Tai Chi in the morning never hurt anyone.

Then we walked across the bridge to "real" China.  The streets of GuanZhou were filled with people selling stuff all over the streets, from grains, and roots-- to fish and other not so good looking things.  I was having a hard time walking around the street markets because they have live animals that they kill for you right there so it is fresh.  Not to be too unpleasant, but they had live turtles for sale to eat, scorpions, and even....BUCKETS OF LIVE SNAKES!!!!  At first I did not notice them, and I was just rolling my luggage through the streets.  I had been very careful with how I had been carrying my luggage because we wanted to preserve my bag and Chris had been carrying it any time I needed to pick it up so that it wouldn't hurt too much while we travelled.  Well, as soon as I saw the Buckets of snakes I picked up my luggage and I was out of there!!!!!  There was no way I was hanging around there!  Chris thought it was the funniest thing.  He said it was the fastest I had moved the whole trip.  After that I hailed a taxi to take us to shopping area where there were no animals.

Once we got to an area that wasn't so scary to me we saw these!  Apparently in China KFC delivers on Schwinn bikes!!!

After walking around for a little bit we hopped back on our train to Hong Kong to meet up with our friends for a night out for New Years 2009!!

Once we got back it was time to get ready and go meet everyone.  We were going to get dessert before going to see the fireworks over the buildings.  It was supposed to be great.  

Here is My main man waiting in line at the dessert restaurant!

And here I am waiting for some yummy dessert!

All smiles after getting our dessert!  I had some very yummy mango something.  It was good, but I don't really know what it was.  That is how most of my eating was....

After dessert we realized that we did not have much time to take the train back to Kowloon in time to see the fireworks.  In fact we barely made it out of the Subway at all.  All we got to see was this little measly firework because we were on the wrong island!!!

At least that one firework looks good!!

We were all really tired, so after that we went straight to our hotel for the night because the next day was a big day of traveling!

Day 10

Today we are traveling from Hong Kong to Korea with a short layover and then on to Japan!

One last look out of our window at Hong Kong...

Getting ready to get on our Jet.

Posing like all the little kids in Asia liked to pose.

We got to Japan late that night and stayed in a hotel close to the airport.

Day 11

The next morning our Japan adventure began!!  Chris has a very good friend that he grew up with that lives in Japan, so he picked us up from our hotel and did some fun sightseeing with us.  We started with a few Temples of course!!  In Japan New Years is bigger than Christmas, so everyone was there for the New Years blessings!!

These are stones honoring people.

One of the beautiful Temples

Statue guarding the Temples

Temple of Health I believe.  Everyone burning incense would direct the smoke onto the parts of their bodies that were ailing and it was supposed to be good for them.

Monks walking in their wooden shoes to a ceremony.  I felt bad trying to take a picture when they were walking towards me so I took it of their backs :)

3 Temples in a row....

Yep, this is a line going into a temple.  And Yes we are going to get into the line and go in as well...

Here we are at the back of the line.

Getting towards the front looking back! 

After that we went to a noodle house.  As we were waiting Greg and Chris were playing with their iPhones.  This little girl was so cute, she was so enthralled in watching them!

 
Then onto the Japanese sport of Pachinko....I still don't get it.....

Next onto another Big Buddha!  This is one of the biggest for  standing or something.  It is bigger than two statue of Liberty's!!  Very big!!

By the way, there are more vending machines in Japan than I have ever seen!!  Supposedly there is one vending machine for every four people!!

That night we went out for Shabu-Shabu, which was very thinly sliced meats that we cooked in hot pots at our table, and then dipped in different sauces.  We paid for a time slot and then you can eat as much as you want for that much time.  So good!

After that we went back to Greg's house in the Suburbs of Tokyo.  Such a good few days!

Great Asian Race Day 12 to be continued....