We've been MIA in the month of January, but we have now returned as February 1st has arrived. January has been a busy busy month and and practically internet-less month. Just yesterday we got our new internet although haven't set it up completely for both computers yet.

When we arrived back from Hong Kong we quickly got back into the swing of things at work. On the 14th we moved to our new apartment the poor man's route. Not really, but you see our apartment is on the same bus route as our old one. So, in the essence of saving some hard earned cash (looking back I would've been happy to spend the extra) we only had the moving company move 10-12 large items, like the couch, fridge, etc. Then Nick had his friend Jack helped us move a few loads in his car. But the rest was packed up in our big travel bags (hockey bags) and brought to the new one by bus! At least we never tried to move anything large by bus, just our big bags. I think we must have made at least 6 trips over 2-3 days. We got all set up in our new one. It's the same size as our old apartment just minus one room. Makes it a little more cozy, but it is quite old, so even colder! We have propane gas that heats our water and there is some ancient crank to get the hot water going in the shower, strange. I was really concerned when we got here how everything was going to fit, but we quickly managed to find a place for everything.

Our friends Bess and Marcel visited us a couple days after we moved and that was definitely a cozy 4 nights all together in our apartment. We took them around Tokyo, showed them the sights, it was great to see them!

Then our friends Angel and Clive left Japan and moved to Malaysia the 3rd week in January, they will be having their baby around the end of Feb. there and we're pretty jealous of the warm weather they are experiencing now.

Other than that, Nick's done teaching classes and is officially done next week as am I!!!! I have 4 more days left of teaching and can't wait. I handed in my resignation last week and it was funny how I was stressed out about it, but it wasn't a problem. My boss who speaks English then made me go to his 4 other bosses to chit chat with them for a while before I could leave. One of those hierarchy things that I had to resign to each one of them in ranking order. Really not that official, they were all quite nice and tried to speak what little English they knew.

The highlight of my week, besides being terribly ill from Mon. to Wed. with some stomach thing was during the daily mandatory cleaning period at school I was handed a toothbrush and asked in Japanese if I could scrub the floor with it. No joke! The cleaning with the students has definitely not been a fun everyday part of the job, being asked to clean a floor with a toothbrush that's just absurd.


I'll put some pictures up later from Bess and Marcel's visit.

Hope everyone is well!

We leave for Hokkaido on a ski/snowboard trip next Friday!

Hong Kong was a great trip and 11 days was the perfect amount of time. If you asked us what we would've done on the 12th day if we hadn't left, that would've been difficult, perhaps. So, that's a good sign, we pretty much did Hong Kong, check! According to RJ's guide book we were able to check off about 20 of the top 25 things to do, so of course there was more to do, but we did a pretty good job. And after the week and half all of use were still talking to each other. We spent this time here in Hong Kong with Angel and Clive and their friend RJ who was visiting from D.C. and then had a chance to spend a couple of our days with Chris, Adrianna and little Sophia.

Favorite parts of Hong Kong not in any particular order:

-Riding the tram up to the Peak and overlooking the crowded city and harbour below.

-Sharing Christmas and opening presents with some of our closest friends.

-Stuffing ourselves silly at the Excelsior's Christmas Day Buffet, absolutely delicious!

-Riding the Star Ferry (only 20 cents) to the other side at Tsim Tsu Shui.

-Shopping! Shoopping! Shopping! We came home with a couple new pairs of pants, a down coat, ski pants, some shirts. The markets in China are cheaper, but this was still fun!

-Stanley Beach and Market and our lunch there. We had some great sandwiches that you just can't find in Japan.

-Our escalator pub crawl during happy hour, we were home and asleep by 9, sad but 2 for 1 drinks ended at 9pm and anywas 4-9 was a good amount of time :)

-Short but sweet the fireworks on New Year's Eve. Nick and I are spoiled with watching the Sydney fireworks which last forever and are amazing. These were still quite neat despite the fact that they only lasted 2 minutes.

-Indian food with the gang on Christmas Eve, what else would you eat on Christmas Eve?

-Visiting the Giant Buddha on Lantau Island. Unfortunately the Sky Cable Car was only open to family of staff that day and we had to take buses up and down the winding mountain roads for an hour each way. But if it had been open this would've been a major highlight. It's gotta be the longest cable car in the world and takes you from one side of the island at the top of this mountain down to the other at sea level, it looked amazing.

- I chose shopping instead of visiting the 10,000 Buddhas, but the boys trip up to the seem them looked really interesting.

- Experiencing the culture in Macau and the influence the Portuguese had many years ago that still remains.

Macau. Ask me before I went to Macau and the only thing I knew about the place was that it is famous for Portugese Egg tarts. (Delicious by the way!) But Macau is definitely Hong Kong's cultural cousin.

The streets are mainly lined with European styled small apartment blocks (as apposed to the bland monstrosities in HK) and cobble stoned roads (compared with drab asphalt). It definitely had a lot of character and a great feel. We wondered through the streets after buzzing early past the Casinos from the Ferry Terminal. We planned on seeing Macau in the day light and when night approached we would try our luck at the many casinos. The Ferry is just about an hour from Hong Kong and you do have to go through Immigration and get your passport stamped, yeah for more stamps in the passport!

Again, like HK there is a ton of shopping in Macau. Lots of little stores selling all sorts of name brands with the labels cut off for less than half the regular price. If you look at your clothing labels a good majority of them would say made in Hong Kong or Macau or inevitably some Southeast Asian country. If you're having a baby like let's say Clive and Angel, this would be an awesome place to stock up and save! Both Macau and HK are great for baby clothes. That's exactly what Angel did and brought back to Japan at least enough to cover their baby's first 2 years!

We ate lunch and while the boys went on a hike visiting the old buildings the girls stayed in town and shopped, no surprise. As the sun set we all headed to the Casinos. We visited the Wynn and the Venetian. Supposedly the Venetian is larger than it's counterpart in Las Vegas. We didn't get a chance to go the the newly opened MGM Grand, but I think we all had fun doing a little gambling. Nick won $320 HK dollars, which is great, wish it would've been $320 US as it was only about $50 US. I played slots and what's great was there were 5 cent slots HK which is comparable in US dollars to less than a penny! On the other hand the Venetian nor the Wynn had any low limit blackjack tables, the cheapest was a $15 minimum bet.

It was a great day out to Macau just wish we would've brought back a box of authentic egg tarts as they were delicious!

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!