Diving Okinawa

The diving adventure’s calling got stonger as I moved towards the south west of Honshu. On Saturday 6th of November I finally flew out of Hiroshima to Naha. The morning of the flight wore my signature. Sleeping over due to a long night out, the original plan to catch the airport shuttle was thrown over board immediately as I started to doubt I’d even make it by cab.

Western Honshu

A lot of catching up to do, for I’ve passed through some more of Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Miyajima since the last entry. The typhoon brought one more very rainy day on the 31st, but after that it definitely go better. The day before that heading out of the hostel for more sight seeing, Khalil and I got into a parade of the Kyoto Women University. We are not sure about what they we’re celebrating, all we could figure out was that the University was established 111 years ago and that they we’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of something.

World Heritage Plenty

When leaving Tokyo on Tuesday in the early morning my destination was Nikko. A famous World Heritage Site north of the capital city. Since then I’ve also been to Hakone on my way to Kyoto, where I will stay until Tuesday. Therefore I’m packing everything into this post, making it a bit longer and coming with some more pictures than usual.

Tokyo Love

So I left Tokyo Tuesday morning… tear… How would I have loved to stay longer to explore more of this fascinating place! But Japan has so much to offer, one has to move on, otherwise you could easily get stuck in a place like Tokyo. But that was Tuesday, and before that laid a weekend ahead of me.

Arrival in Tokyo

So I got my flight from Shanghai Pudong to Tokyo Narita on Tuesday morning and landed in Japan around 2 p.m. local time (CET +7). The way to the hostel already revealed the vastness of the world’s largest metropolitan area, however different than I expected. No enormous housing compounds everywhere made of skyscrapers and built overnight. Actually, there are surprisingly few high-risers overall. And the first thing that struck me when I got out of the Asakusa subway station was the calm!

Shanghai & Tennis

The Expo has clearly lost the battle for my time… As a matter of fact, I guess I’ll have to come back to see Shanghai another time. But I’ll have to come back in some years, say 10, just to see how it changed. I couldn’t help but to spend hours on my seat 17 in the Qi Zhong Tennis Stadium. I had the pleasure to follow Roger Federer’s way through the Final with amazing Matches.

The way to Shanghai

As my friends left for Shanghai I decided to stay a couple of nights more in Yangshuo. The place is nice and before emersing myself into huge cities (Shanghai, Tokyo, etc.) I figured it would be nice to spend so more time in a rather small and quiet place. Although the latter is debatable, specially during the Golden Week!

Yangshuo

Well, so much for drifting quietly to Yangshuo… after spending an hour in the car to get to the boat. We got onto it and left the shore with a rattling engine noise. As this wouldn’t be annozing enough, we were escorted by dozens of other boat and whole armadas of boat came from the other direction also producing waves which soaked the bottom of our bags on the boat. So that was not that pleasant.

Mainland China

As expected, no access to fb. But that’s what’s good about the blog, I still can post 🙂 So we left Hong Kong. However, I’ll be back before going home. In the meantime, one of the typical night shots of the skyline.

Hong Kong

Well, here I am!

Going towards other worlds

As this post is being published I’m taking off leaving the grounds of Zurich and Switzerland on flight LX 138. The destination is Hong Kong! This is where I’ll be meeting a friend to have a look around before continuing to the People’s Republic of China, where we will be going to Guilin and Yangshuo before heading towards Shanghai, where this friend is living at the moment.