My parents have been preparing this trip to China and Japan for several months and it has been very relaxing just to get away from my normal daily routine back home in Oregon. I didn’t realize that I would be visiting Japan for the first time since that has been on my bucket list, including visiting Europe and other places around the world. I have enjoyed visiting Hong Kong again, hanging out with aunts/uncles and seeing other areas of Hong Kong.I have enjoyed visiting newer areas that I haven’t viewed before, i.e. Mong Kok, riding the MTR train stations, eating delicious food/desserts and then travel to Japan for the first time in my life.
When I arrived in Hong Kong, I was able to visit places that I have never seen before and it was nice revisiting this massive city. It was also relaxing socializing with my aunt and uncle who were completing their 5 week vacation from Thailand and Austria, including spending a few days in Hong Kong. I enjoyed celebrating my aunt’s birthday at a nice local restaurant with some friends from Hong Kong and some family members before heading to Japan for the first time in my life. Japan has totally changed my perspective of this great country. The temples and imperial era palaces were astonishing, including the preservation of the buildings after all these years. My folks and myself participated in a tour group that had an awesome tour guide who was fluent in Japanese. When we arrived in Japan, we visited this specific temple that was full of shopping booths, water area and an ancient area that has a specific meaning. This ancient area has a glass bottle that is numbered from 1 to 100 in Chinese numbers and there is a glass bottle that specifies what number is drawn from the glass bottle on a wooden stick. Once that certain number is drawn out of the glass bottle, the person views the number and tries to match it with the correct box. When the person opens the wooden box, there are a pack of papers that could have good, very good, very very good or really bad messages that could represent the person’s day. The temple also has hundreds of booths filled with food, souvenirs and other things for tourists to purchase. As I was viewing the culture of Japan, I was really interested in how every single local civilian always respects each other, including not leaving any trash on the streets or jamming into trains. I also enjoyed the delicious Japanese food that myself and other tourists received during the 6-day trip around Kyoto, Mount Fuji, Osaka and Tokyo. The main struggle during this 6-day trip around Japan was the rain, wind and the typhoon that occurred when we were stuck at the Osaka airport to head back to Hong Kong. I was fasciated by the gold palace in Japan that was constructed mainly for a general. I would have enjoyed to visit more temples, palaces and other places in Tokyo instead of a week, but what can you do. When I went to the northern part of China to Guangzhou, I visited a convention that looked kind of like Comic Con. However, it was just vendors and suppliers marketing their products to other suppliers for business deals/purposes. Once I was completed with Northern China, I celebrated my aunt’s 80th birthday with my folks and her husband. Overall, I enjoyed my trip even though I was involved in two typhoons. I wanted to spend more time in Japan instead of touring around the country for a week, however I enjoyed the tour guide and also the awesome food.
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