Pictures often tell a thousand words or perhaps ten thousand in this case.



But I will say that the monk statues on the way up to the top were varied and quite interesting. I saw only the same ones twice on a few occasions only. The facial expressions and body language were great! Just check out those photos on our Flickr here.

A final note: Check out these three monks, long arm, long legs and long eyebrows. Something all young children should aspire to have.

Drinking in Hong Kong can be cheap or expensive, actually it can be both at the same time. Beer prices at the supermarket were as low as 50 cents a tinnie but could fetch as much as $15 or more a pint at a sports bar or night club. Now, there wasn't that much drinking going on and it wasn't one big alcohol-a-thon but we didn't have beers all around the place. From Kowloon to Stanley Market, Wan Chai to Soho. Soho was probably our favourite with it's steep climb from Hong Kong Central up to the Mid-Levels. There's actually the world's longest escalator there which makes the climb up a little easier. I came up with an amazing idea, an escalator pub crawl through Soho! So, during a happy hour (3-9pm) one day, Jen, RJ, Clive and I set out on the journey where each time we got off the escalator (or touched pavement), we had to find a bar and have a drink. The beers tasted sweet and we met a few interesting people along the way.



The final bar story includes the cheap and expensive drinks that I first talked about. We were dragged, literally, into a Phillipino hostess bar (Jen and Angel were not with us) and told that beers were HKD$25 each, no extra charges. We sat down for some conversation, and please believe me that conversation isn't code for something else. This was a hostess bar that offered only conversation, like Japan. Anyway, we were half way through a can when the Mama of the bar invited us to buy a beer for the young ladies for HKD$120. No thanks, we emptied our beers, upped and left straight away.

Hong Kong. Perhaps an Asian New York, only with laundry hung out of every second window. Hong Kong. Maybe like Sydney, a harbour city that wants to attract more tourists for it's New Years Eve fireworks.

Whatever you picture Hong Kong to be like, it contains millions of tall office buildings and residential apartment blocks stretching from the grey street to the pollution brown sky. From the peak, it looks quite stunning. I would love to have visited pre-WW2 and then come back now to see the changes. I am sure they would be obvious and immense.



But I want to describe two places on the other side of the island, mind you, this description is based on a passing glance only. Aberdeen seems to be a sleepy town just 30 minutes from Hong Kong Central. It could be a town where everyone sleeps but they don't play here. From what we saw, the fishing industry dominates the harbour foreshore and dormant apartment blocks speckle the skyline. It is an area populated with the elderly, passing time in the sun, and junks. These small boats still trade, house families and take tourists like us out for a trip around the harbour. This was the only place where we could bargain and again, Jen excelled. I think the boat owner started at $500 Hong Kong dollars for 5 people for 30mins but Jen, and Angel, got her down to $220. I still don't know how she does it. I think the key is for them to name the price, then for them to go lower, then to split that second price in half and aim around that point... or something like that. Our junk, a traditional Hong Kong small vessel, was actually motorised and didn't have sails but it was a good trip nonetheless. We got to see it all, trading junks shipping vegetables or other products around the harbour and junk homes used by families. It is said that many years ago some people were born and died on junks never setting foot on land in their lives. Hard to believe.



Stanely Beach and Market is the next area that is worth a mention. Again, it is on the other side of the island but this area has a much different feel to it. It is an area that looks to be populated by the wealthy. Plush homes and nice apartments with gorgeous ocean views line the foreshore and creep up the escarpments that meet the bay. The rich and wealthy probably have weekend homes here and so they should. It had some cool bars and decent cafes along the promenade and with views like in the pictures, who wouldn't have a home here! This area is also home to a good market with fairly decent goods for a reasonable price. Jen couldn't really bargain here as a lot of the market stalls have signs saying "No Bargaining" or "Fixed plices". We were kinda interested in buying some artwork there but the colours weren't quite right for us and it seemed that it may have been a screen print with colours placed on top. Oh well, we'll get something later. Most of the shops here were small stores that had '2nds' and overstock for brands ranging from Billabong, Gap, Old Navy, Polo, etc. Jen had fun looking through all the racks and bins to find a treasure. Coming from Australia all this stuff was super cheap, but as I was told by Jen some of it was about the same price you would pay in the States at stores like TJMaxx or Marshalls. Obviously Jen lasted a lot longer here than I did and soon found myself searching for a cold beer!

We arrived back from a great vacation in Hong Kong a fews days ago dead tired! Thankfully, we have had a few days to catch up on some much needed sleep, get back up to speed with our Blog and catch you up on our adventures throughout the holidays. I (Jen) spent most of the day updating all of our photos from Japan and beyond to our FLICKR account including Christmas and New Years.

I didn't realize how long it would take as hours later I found myself still sitting at the computer and the sun had already set, I started at noon. So I don't advise looking through them all, just a few at a time when your bored! We'll do a series of post about out trip with some photos and movies to watch.

Of course that is if you are in the mountains! We were pretty excited to get to see some real white stuff this year during the Christmas season. This past weekend we headed out to Nigata which is about 3 hours Northwest of Tokyo for a snowboarding trip. Nick said snowboarding would be just like 'riding a bike' and would come back easily after the 2 times I went last year, but it wasn't so. While my ass isn't as bruised as I remember it being last year, this snowboarding thing still isn't coming very natural to me. I'm doing okay at it and like it, it's just that with skiing I can relax a lot more and cruise down the slopes. Whereas with snowboarding I am so tense and concentrating on every turn as Nick flies by me with such ease. Regardless we had a great time, my body still hurts, but at least no broken bones! Still haven't decided if I will retreat back to skiing for our big trip up north to Hokkaido in February. I know my body wants to as it's screaming please please ski...ski...ski!

We went with a group of mostly foreigners, called 'gaijins' in Japanese and met some great people from all over the place. It's funny because you get people who have traveled all around the world and you're always bound to meet someone where you find out you were in the same place at the same time, lived in the same town or those constant moments of 'wow, what a small world!' For instance this guy form South Africa had been working in Auburn Hills for a couple years and living in Birmingham.

We stayed at a small lodge with the entire group and had some great food cooked for us. The best part was the snow! When we got to Nigata there was enough snow to go snowboarding, but it wasn't great. At night it snowed and snowed and when we woke up in the morning about 10 inches had fallen!

On Sunday, Adrianna and I hosted a baby shower for our friend Angel at my apartment. It was supposed to be a surprise as she thought we were having one in January. Unfortunately little clues along the way made Angel more and more suspicious. One of them being that if you someone buys you something from your gift registry at Amazon.com, they can see who and when that gift was bought. Talk about ruining a surprise. Anyways, Angel got suspicious wondering why people would be buying things so early if the shower wasn't until January. And a 'well I am sure they are just making sure that it arrives in Japan on time' wasn't going to cut it. Also, at Kanda last week around the office, she mentioned people acting a little strange and people voluntarily explaining how they were 'busy doing one thing or another this weekend' She wasn't positive as she was just suppose to come over to our apartment with her husband and we were going out to eat for lunch, but she had a good idea that something different might happen.

It was nice, we stuffed ourselves silly with food, watched her and her husband Clive open presents for their soon to be born little baby boy and played a few games. The photo below is from our friend Julie as she photographed a highlight of the day with the 'clay baby' game :)

Thankfully I remembered this past week that I needed to get new passport pages added as except for 2 remaining spaces, I have completely filled my passport! Granted a few complete pages have been taken up by visas. I got it for my maiden voyage to Australia in 2003 and now 4 years later I have requested more pages, which is pretty cool. This was a relatively easy process and super quick as well. I sent my passport to the US Embassy last week Tuesday and by Thursday it was returned to me with a 12 new pages added. All for free! That was pretty surprising. We'll be traveling to Hong Kong, Maccau and perhaps over the boarder to China again this Christmas, Thailand in February and on to the Bahamas in April, so those new pages will be put to use in no time.

Both Nick and I survived the test which was held yesterday, although I barely did. We won't find out the results until February, but personally for me I'm not expecting too much. I did it, it was an experience and I at least know that I would've definitely had no problem passing the lowest level as previously planned.

On a positive note, I think I did quite well on the Kanji section. Nick should pass no problem although I was relieved when he said that listening part was quite difficult. I think my days of studying Japanese are over now, but now I have to find something else to occupy my time at work when I'm not in class teaching.

This test was pretty anal compared to other standardized tests I have taken before. The whole process was extremely tedious and they even had red and yellow cards. Yes just like soccer, a yellow was a warning and a red, sayonara your kicked out! The test only had 3 sections which combined together for about 2 hours, but it took from 9:45-3:30 to finish the entire test. We had breaks in between each sections, but what took the most time was how they had to check everything before we started. They had to individually hand out test sheets, questions, check our IDs and make sure they matched the photo they were given. This was done at the beginning and end of each section, I couldn't believe it! Then of course they did the warning in Japanese each time. Yellow card for eating, talking, etc.... Red card if your phone goes off, caught cheating, coughing??...I really didn't catch all of the rules as that Japanese was NOT part of the test :) One guy got kicked out of the listening section, red card-ed when his watch beeped on the hour! Thankfully, I wasn't wearing my Timex watch or that would've been me!

I'm glad I took it, a good experience, but I think I'll be moving back to Spanish, it's a whole lot easier language to learn that's for sure!

While shopping at a local store in Japan, we came across these boxers by HANES! You would've thought Hanes could've gotten this one right. They seem to love things Michigan here!

It seems as though Christmas is growing each year here in Japan. I started writing this post at the end of November and even then, the lights were up all around Tokyo, Christmas Trees and decorations at the big department stores and Christmas Music can be heard in most of the Japanese stores as well. It's good though as it helps to put us in the holiday spirit and makes it feel a little more like Christmas back home.

We even put up our Christmas Tree and lights extra early this year so that we could celebrate with Nick's parents when they were here. It was great as we did a little Christmas and opened presents with them early on the 15th of November. That's gotta be one of the earliest celebrations of Christmas. This year since we'll be in Hong Kong for Christmas, we are planning on packing up our little tree and taking it with us along with decorations to put up in the apartment we rented with our friends. We'll probably just leave it there as we won't be spending another Christmas here in Japan.

We went to Kyoto last week during Thanksgiving (unfortunately no turkey in Kyoto) with Nick's parents who were in Japan for two weeks. This year I passed on the getting made up like a geisha, but did have a chance to see many girls dressed up. Last year Nick and I went to Kyoto during the Kouyou season (which is Japanese for the turning of the leaves and it was beautiful). So, we promised that we would do the same this year! It's seemed a little colder down in Kyoto as well as the rest of Japan compared with last winter as the leaves are already starting to fall off the trees and there is good amount of snow in the mountains. While in Kyoto we ventured to the different temples and shrines, including the Golden Pavillion (which is definitely the best), Kiyomizudera, the Silver Temple (which actually isn't silver at all) and a really neat one with 1,000 Tori Gates. These gates can be seen in the pictures. There was a hike up a hill that took about 40 minutes to get up, all lined with these redish-orange gates and amazing site to see. We just missed a huge market at one of the temples when we arrived, which was too bad as they had a lot of home made crafts, foods, etc. We commented as they were packing up, that no one uses rubbermaid totes or boxes to pack their stuff up, it's still very traditional with big sheets wrapped around all their goods. There's a picture of it in the slide show. Most nights we stuffed ourselves silly with different Japanese foods. Kyoto's a really nice place and has so many sights to see. Mostly temples, shrines and castles, but we again still didn't get a chance to see all of them...there's just too many. We got to see a just married couple getting a ride around town in a rickshaw as seen in the photos. The best part of Kyoto is how it is a modern city, but they have kept the traditional old areas.