So I was back home for a luxurious 9 days or so and was called off to go to Denmark. This didn’t really surprise me, since the travel was business, not pleasure. People asked me in the US: Did you tour Europe at all? My answer always is that no, I do that for my job. And even now that my trip around the world is over, I plan to keep up the blog. Just to point out – my Finnworld goes on and so do my various travels. I plan to do a little sneak peaks on the places I visit, just to keep records on my travels and hopefully pop up some interesting things to those who keep on reading from a point of view of a Finn.

So today I’m in Aarhus, Denmark. Aarhus is one of the biggest towns in Denmark and it’s on the mainland of it, not in the island like Copenhagen. To get to Aarhus from Jyväskylä where I live, I have to take three very small plane rides, Jyväskylä to Helsinki, Helsinki to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Aarhus. And then a bus for fortyfive minutes. This took the better part of my Sunday to be honest.

I have only been to Copenhagen before in all of Denmark, and even there I was as a kid, visiting Legoland as you can expect. Denmark is slightly like everywhere else in the Nordic countries, we have had a pact even before the European Union, that we can travel between our countries as we please… But just being here now, the whole idea of the Nordic Countries feels slightly like a gang of swedish-speaking friends where Finland has always been a little left out of the club. Certainly we would have never even been invited in unless we would have been a part of Sweden for such a long time and having a swedish speaking minority still attached.

As you know, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are very similar languages. As a Finn, I am made to learn Swedish in Schools. It’s not optional in Finland, you do it or you fail basic education. And no one fails in Finland. This week, I have once again been feeling blessed that I come from a small country with a weird language that doesn’t comply with almost any other – this forced me as well as all Finns, to learn various of languages in School. I have studied Swedish, English, French, Spannish, Estonian, Japanese and small amount of Italian. Even if I wouldn’t be comfortable in more than couple of them, it means I can read signs and get around Europe without much difficulty.

You would think that one survives somewhere like in Denmark with just English, right? Yes, everyone speaks it, but try to get a local bus and bus fare and where to get off… It suddenly becomes more complicated. Swedish is similar yes, but it’s not instant understanding of what is going on, I am telling you.

Aarhus seems like a nice enough University town, with a big campus area spread around the harbor. There is an old town, which means medieval buildings, looking pretty much the same as others in central Europe… Of course all have their own details, but in the end, they have the same European quality attached to them. European night skies also have the same blue going on somehow. I swear the blue of the magic hour in US or in Asia is different. In Japan, everything is kind of purple-pink, in US it’s a strong violet color. In Europe, it’s a dark blue night. All beautiful, but all different to me.

What irritates me of certain countries in Europe like Denmark, is that they have to be so god damn special NOT to switch into using euros, even now that they are EU members. Sweden and UK both belong to this club of stupidity and they have paid dearly in the economical crisis and value of their own currency going down. Not to even mention Iceland. DKK the Danish Kronor is also a very hard currency to convert, now in November 2009, 100DKKs is 13 euros. So take one zero off and add 30% to the price. I have to say that I like dollars (USD, AUD and CAD) much better, since they just need for me to give myself a 40-30% discount. Which I can much better live with. My hotel receptionist told me that my bus to the campus was going to cost 180DKK. Of course he made a small error in his english and meant ‘18′. But this is why I now have 500DKK extra, which I’ll turn back to euros, probably loosing something like 20% of the value in the process. What can I say, life is a bitch today. Perhaps a better way of getting my moneys worth would be to just covert those kronas into Gin.

But overall, I am complaining about nothing in Scandinavia. It’s like travelling back home. My  recommendation for a hotel if you ever need to stay in the Nordic countries is Scandic. It’s slightly less expensive than the Radisson SAS (which of course is posher and more luxurious), and it’s always top class. Even if the receptionist can make small mistakes.

I am flying back home tomorrow, but on my way I’ll pass fields and flat land as well as windmills of old and new kinds. That’s what Denmark is for you. For me of course, it’s the land that Hamlet lived in and somehow taking my bus from Aarhus airport to Aarhus reminded me a lot of the Kenneth Branaugh version of Hamlet. I wonder if I should treat myself with that from Amazon for Christmas… Perhaps so:)

At the last point I would add that who ever designed the lighting sceme of the pedestrial main road… had the same pattern as the ones in my home town. Just see for yourself…

This morning I woke up and I knew that I was going to get ill. It was one of those tingles in the throat when it’s evident. But no worries, it was the very last morning, so I thanked my luck for being ill on zero of the days in my holiday, what a blessing. Swine flu, bring it on.

Our flight to Heathrow wasn’t until six a clock, so we had a good while morning to bounce around New York left. It was sunny as well, what a great set of weathers have we stumbled on. We generally had very little rain on this trip, only a couple of days when it was pissing down, and even then, it was entertaining.

First things first, our mission was to visit the Chinatown post office and get the very last package on its way to Finland. 26 packages total have we sent from this trip, most of them not on the smaller side if you see what I mean. The post office was an experience on its own. In there you really understand all the safety rituals, all the reasons to be alert of all times. This was like going to a prison to talk to an inmate. All the office workers were behind thick, bullet proof glass, with signs on them that said: Attacking a Postal Worker or robbing a post office is a crime punishable by 10-15 years in prison. There was a bullet proof glass cage which you put the package into, which the officer then opens only after you closed it from the other side. Later on the day we walked past another post office downtown. The security in that one was nothing like this. It really gives you a perspective on how dodgy the neighborhood where we were staying was. I didn’t see any guns, but I could feel them all around me, in the bags, under the counters.

After checking out and leaving our luggage to the hotel reception, we took bus number 15 to Battery Park again and went to visit the museum of American Indians. This was a huge, gorgeous Art Deco building which they seemed to have gained recently to the purpose of putting out this exhibit. However, it was one of the poorest experiences that I’ve seen, an excuse for a museum. It didn’t help that we stumbled onto a security guard, who was pretending to be a curator, who knew absolutely nothing about the pieces on show and then decided that he would interpret my husband’s shit which was Haida art moon that we bought from Vancouver: “See this, it’s a Killer Whale”, was the last straw. They had some costumes of the aboriginals on show (some inluded series of Moose teeth sewn on top!), which of course were interesting, but they had been placed out in the huge building by an eight year old… The museum seriously needs to pay a visit to the Asian Art Museum on San Francisco. As the aboriginals let us down, I felt no obligation or need to buy their tat, even though they had Haida art there as well.

We decided to take the metro back to the Chinatown to have lunch around there. We also tried to check out the museum of Chinese in New York, but it was –if possible- even a bigger disappointment than museum number one previously today. This one didn’t even have an entrance to it. There was a corridor, a sign, but no entrance. But not to worry, there was still plenty of post cards to write back home. I estimate that I have written around 200 post cards, at least 12 from each city (30 from some) and we were in around 12 cities on our way…

No more to do except to get a taxi to the airport. JFK terminal 8 was kind of a disappointment as well… Nothing more that I would have wanted to buy, series or burger kings and Kentucky fried chickens lurking. We spent our last hours abroad watching quality American television – the one thing that the Americans do well. I never had a huge urge to go to America, like some… And now as I’ve been there, I can say that yes, there is original culture there, hiding underneath it all… But I have no huge desire to be back soon… Back in San Francisco one day would be nice, maybe we’ll take the Transsiperian to Vladivostok like we always talked about.

Just when leaving, I stumbled onto the evil King Fu Panda Noodles shop… Forget everything I said about it being bland in here… Only in America…

We arrived to the JFK after only 4 hours of flight, which meant that we basically skipped the whole night. I had maybe two times ten minutes sleep, so with jetlag, that was not the nicest day ahead.

The customs were not a Bitch, if you don’t count the continuous CNN and morning shows where the ‘stupid people’ can complain about their loans. It took about 45 minutes and we were through. We didn’t even have to fill the green leaflets again since we had only been to Canada… Not exactly abroad now, is it?

It was 7am still and we got a taxi to our Manhattan hotel, the Hotel 91 in East Broadway, Chinatown. This was one of the two options we had in our price range, which was 100euros tops. New York hotels tend to cost average of 300dollars a night, so that was a bargain. The hotel is clean and nice. We have two double beds, so technically four people could have stayed in our room… The toilet is clean, but in comparison to all the hotels that we’ve stayed at before this: It lacks a kettle. There is a lounge for hot water though, in case we need it. There is a coin laundy inside and a post office as well as a liquor store next door. This makes it a great hotel for us, but of course not for all the people.

As tired as we were, we didn’t really get to our room before 3pm, so we had around seven hours to kill. This involved the trial and error or buying a metcard (7day overall pass to the metro and bus system) and realizing that it does not work if you need to go out and in again. Also the Halloween time had seriously closed down some of the lines, so the closest subway station to us was Canal Street. We took the metro uptown to Central Park, since we figured that it would certainly at least be open.

It was the New York city Marathon day today, which was closing even more streets, not to mention confusing the traffic in the Central Park. We had Vancouver-type breakfast in the memory of our friend KG, I had a vegetable omelet, brown toast, orange juice and coffee. I have to say that it tasted better in Vancouver.

When ever in my head I thought of New York, my first place to visit was always the Angel Bethesda. What can I say: I just love ‘Angels in America’ so much. New York is really a city that you see through the television a lot. It’s on all the TV series, it’s on all the films. We walked past the Mall of Central park in a gorgeous yellow and green blanket of trees. This was the spot on cover of ‘When Harry met Sally’. It takes you all the way to the lovely fountain of Bethesda, which to me symbolizes all the tragedy of the big city – the aids, the religions, The cold world outside. It’s as breathtaking as it is in the series.

After wandering through the ramble of the park, we came to our senses and returned to the road which took us to the Metropolitan museum of art. It’s a huge complex, like the British Museum or Louvre, but we were mainly interested in the exhibition on Samurai art, which had just gone on. It was a fascinating layout, lots of katanas, even some cloth pieces, which we know can only be exposed to daylight for a month in every five years, and of course some helmets and armor. The Helmets were even more obscure than we’ve seen before – not even Masamune Date had a huge ‘U’ shaped golden fork decorating his head. At this point however, it started to feel as we’d have to commit ritual suicide if we didn’t get any sleep, so my memories of the exhibition are specially vague. Sleep deprivation is a fascinating thing. Man can think that can accomplish anything, but if man does not sleep… There is nothing but insanity waiting.

We then walked to a subway and found ourselves back in Canal Street. We had one of the best meals of my life for lunch in a Schetzuan restaurant there, hot but great. After that it was three hour nap and dinner to make our night complete. I saw the angel, that was the main accomplishment of the day.

One of the best parts of travelling around the world is that you get to meet the friends around the world that you never seriously meet. One of those people are our dear friend KG. She flew all the way from Houston to see us in Vancouver and told my husband straight off that if she ever were in Spain, she’d expect us to do the same. I am sure we would as well, because she’s all kinds of ace.

We reached KG reading on her Kimble, the electronic book, where you download the books you read and no longer do you need to feel the burden of carrying tons of books with you. As this is clearly the future of things, I agree… But there is something so poetic, harmonic, feel of goodness and back to nature, when one steps into a bookshop or even opens one to leaf through the pages. I don’t think I am ready to give up books just yet, perhaps ever. Not the least because I married an author which means that my house is generally wall-papered with books. I certainly don’t mind. They mere feeling of them around gives me a sense of my past, all those weeks at the summer cottage with my grandfather in the corner reading. Or sleeping in my Grandma’s library room. Books are my way.

For catching up the gossips and each others lives, we decided to walk downtown via the Grandville bridge. I think we were about half way over the bridge when it started to rain and the day turned into all kinds of Vancouver misery. Suddenly I was glad that I bought matching Star Trek fleeces with my friend Tero in San Francisco.

The Grandville street takes you all the way downtown, through plenty of shopping opportunities. We visited a couple of department stores and finally stumbled into the Gallery of Bill Reid, a man who has made a significant part of the aboriginal art in this area. His perhaps the most famous piece is the ‘Raven and the First Men’, which is a huge piece of a yellow cedar sculpture, which he made to the museum of Anthropology here in Vancouver. There was series of earlier versions of this piece in display in this gallery.

All three of us were very touched with the art of the native Americans. On this area the art focuses on masks, sculptures, clothes, capes, canoes, jewelry and of course the totem poles. I think my husband in particular was very impressed as he started to decorate our imaginary future house with stuff that he could have bought (with also imaginary funds). I thought the most impressive parts were the red and blue capes that were worn in the rituals of the area. Even if I fell asleep just a little during the 50-minute film about canoe art… The ravens, the bears, the foxes, the seals… This is all animals that I recognize, because they feel like the same animals back home. This is my kind of art, definitely. Makes me wonder why the Finnish natives didn’t come up with Totem poles.

The weather took a turn to much more cold as we left the Gallery and had a small lunch in town. Vancouver sure is an end to the Autumn. If it’s like this tomorrow, we’ll stay indoors. People always think that it’s wrong for Finns to be cold. What they don’t realize is that when Finns are cold, it’s not just a small drift of cold air. It means you might have only a few hours to live before you die of being too cold. So we have warming in the house. We have secured clothing that might make us look like pixies or Michelin men, but at least we are warm. There is no cold weather, there is only unefficient wardrobes.

In any case, we checked out the cinema of Vancouver, which would have provided entertainment, but only after an hour and a half wait, so we decided to get the skytrain back to West Broadway, where our hotel, the Park Inn is located. The Olympics are kicking in in Vancouver in February, which means that they’ve just completed a series of very impressive building processes in this city. One of those is the Canada line which connects the airport with the waterfront of downtown. Luckily our hotel is only 4 blocks away from one of the stops, so we had a really cheap way getting home.

Day 48/63

We reluctantly left the save haven that is our friend’s place in San Francisco and got a taxi to the airport. San Francisco has been much better than could be expected and certainly a place where we’ll return one day.

Today’s flight was the only one that we couldn’t do with One World tickets, so we got United Airlines cheap flight. This meant that we got surprised with another 40dollars to check in our bags. I have to say that the Around the world ticket is a pretty good deal: You don’t have to pay for everything else in the side… You get luggage for free and you also normally get served food and alcohol. Not with American Airlines though, so don’t be surprised. If they say they are selling ‘entrees’ on a 5 hour flight, what they mean is: Do buy food if you are hungry.

In any case, San Francisco airport had little shopping to do, so I continued to bury myself into the Twilight saga, which I am reading now, so that I don’t have to waste my time back home. It’s very addictive, even if it’s not all that good. I suppose Best Sellers are like that.

As we arrived to British Columbia, it was immediately like coming back home. It’s about as cold, I can imagine, and there seems to be plenty of water. The immigration’s decorations were filled with aboriginal cloths and poles, they made me feel like I will have a good time in this city. We got another taxi to our hotel, the Park Inn, right outside Downtown Vancouver.

The selection of restaurants around the hotel are various and promising. Three metres to a liquor shop and seven eleven, three Japanese restaurants in the same block and so on. We also have wireless internet in the room as well as my husband’s number one fantasy: A Coin Laundry inside the hotel as well. Oh, and did I mention the Post office five metres away? We clearly have picked the best position so far to be in.

We had a lovely Indian buffet for dinner, while watching the city lights. Our friend from Dallas is joining us for a few days, so we decided to leave sightseeing for tomorrow and the seven days we are spending here. It didn’t take me long to realize that this is the most promising city yet. Sure, it’s freezing outside, but that’s just like home: Just need to go shopping for some tights!

In the airport I realized that I will never move to the Southern Athmosphere, it’s just not my thing. I am a Northern girl.

Day 41/63

We got up early and checked the complimentary breakfast at our hotel the Aqua Aloha Surf and Spa. This consisted mainly of pan cakes, fruit and muffins. If I have not told you yet, the Hawaiian fruits are gorgeous and brilliantly fresh. I can’t eat raw anything in Finland, but in here it’s no problem, since they don’t have to use toxins for keeping them up until the get to Finland…

After breakfast we consulted our lobby consierge who booked us into a shuttle to Pearl Harbor. We were there about 9:30am, which meant we didn’t really have to queue very much for the USS Arizona tickets. The USS Arizona is the main sight in Pearl Harbor, consisting a 15 minute film about the events of 7^th of December 1941, trying to get the audience into the mood of about 1100 men who were killed on board. They carefully tell the story in a way, that the ‘Japanese had to attack’, because they had no choice. Where as of course there has been theories that perhaps the US knew they were coming, but did nothing so that they could later on justify their own cruelties against Japan. None of this has been proven of course.

In 1941, Japan bombed all eight battleships in Pearl Harbor bay, sinking many of them. USS Arizona was hit to its ammunition storage which blew up and made it sink so very fast that most men didn’t stand a chance. The memorial is a white capsule built on top of the underwater grave of these men, the ship itself, which they left in place. All the other battleships have been recovered/taken out of the harbor. You can see some of the bits of it from the impressive memorial, in which, you should only speak in whisper. I think this was much harder for the Americans than for us.

After the theatre and the boat trip to USS Arizona, we scampered into the USS Bowfin, a submarine that served in the WWII and managed to get through two missions to Japan sea without harm. I am scared of submarines, as I find under water excursions to be scary in general – I wouldn’t want to drown as my death. USS Bowfin is an impressive sight on its own, and we had good audio guides telling us what was going on. We saw the torpedo rooms, the four big engines and of course the quarters of the submarine men. They were luckier than most sea service men, because their life expectancy was so low that they got better food in general. Fresh fruit and vegetables were available as long as they lasted and they even had an ice cream machine. The ship had less beds than men, so when one would get off duty, he would go and wake someone up, take their bed and keep it warm.

When the submarines would sail to shore, they would hang up a flag of their conquests, which are all presented in the museum of the submarine. They had small Japanese flags calculating the ships they had sunk. Some flags have even German flags on them. The whole experience of Pearl Harbor is somewhat contradictive to me, not because my grand uncles fought on the other side, but just the feeling of late events in the world: What is a good reason to go to war? You want something so badly that it justifies killing of others…

We couldn’t visit the USS Missouri, the great big Battleship that is normally one of the main big attractions. It had been taken on dry land, I am assuming for service. Instead there was a real air-craft carrier on the Pearl Harbor bay. It had arrived three days ago. Pearl Harbor is still a major military base, which you can see of all the army men in the hotels partying on their leaves.

Later on, we went shopping in the neighborhood. I bought some tiki-tat and immediately sent it home. Not only was this a relatively cheap sending service, but they say it’ll get there in 5 days. This kind of post looks really effective in comparison to the Australian “maybe it’ll be there in three months -policy”. There is a ton of Twilight crap around and I am hoping to run into some quality TV series tat shop in San Francisco/New York.

Finally note to self: When you are deciding which size your drink/soda/shake should be, bear in mind that this is America. So ‘medium’ size means the size of my freaking head…

Day 26/63

It was pissing down rain on our last day in Shanghai, so as cheap as the possible tat around the corner would have been, we decided to spend our time in the hotel instead. We had some martinis and dumplings and headed for the airport in the afternoon. Goodbye Shanghai!

Overnight flight from Shanghai to Sydney was okay, 10 hours is still going to hurt, no matter how well you have managed the situation of inflatable pillows, flight socks, alcohol and entertainment. Of course your airline will contribute as well. We flew with Qantas this time, which probably hear me playing Balderdash with my husband before the flight… They totally ignored me on several occasions on service, including ‘forgetting us’ out of all the others while delivering dinner… I have now reached a point where I have seen many of the films on offer in the entertainment systems – I watch films a lot anyways, and this time the selection *in* the system was nothing like the one described in the little magazine they handed to us. However, I enjoyed State of Play and Young Victoria, finally some good airplane entertainment.

So do you know what QANTAS stands for? Because I should think: “Quick! Ask Nobbs to Attack Siperia” is a pretty good shot at it… Do I get your votes?

Day 20/63

We left Japan expecting it to be a culture shock. Even as we’ve been to both countries, we’ve never gone from one to another. We got the Maglev train from the Shanghai airport to town. This is a bullet train that goes 300km/hour, just because there are no rails, just magnetic tracks where it floats on. On curves, it goes kind of sideways, which is very spooky. The train journey to Shanghai only takes eight minutes, which my husband decided that we’d spend in the first class, as it was the whole of 10euros each.

We got a taxi from the other side of the river ‘Huang Pu’ to our hotel, which is the Astor House hotel, the first luxurious and modern hotel in the city, right on the Pund. The Pund is the area where the British settled down after the opium wars and eventually all the other foreign powers such as the Germans, the Americans and so on joined them. However, the French couldn’t live with the British, so they have their own area ‘the French concession’…

Our hotel the Astor House is rather impressive. Even as they are over 160 years old, they have gotten the hang of modern days. There is internet installed in the rooms for a small fee (very slow connection, but anyways) and the bathroom has hair dryers, the light switch is on the door so that you keep your key in a safe place and so on. The room reminds me of the room I stayed in Athens, wooden floors, huge bathroom… All very nice. You could even stay at a celebrity’s room, meaning where someone famous stayed like Charlie Chaplin, Bertrand Russell or Albert Einstein. What is more attractive to me though, is that in three metres out of the door, you get to a bridge which gives out the classic view over Shanghai with the television mast building. I’ll use that for some photos later on for sure.

Of course when you step out of the door, the misery of life in China immediately begins. You get the herds of ‘Hello Lady’s excuseme, would you lie to buy some tat?)… In here they are mostly pushing to buy watches.. Perhaps that’s the thing, certainly not postcards like back in Beijing. The best way to look at pushy sales people is not to give them an eye of any kind. You put your ‘ignoring’ face on and move along. I have been surprised on how they do come to you in English, rather than in Chinese. But I suppose this is the foreign area.

You can also see the foreign area in the prices of tat. We know that there are places, quieter streets, where the prices are about 20% of the prices here on the foreign area. We had a meal for 10euros, but we know, that is rather expensive for what we got, even if it was really good and three dishes with two teas. They have looked at the foreigners around and come to the conclusion that they *will* pay more. So why not charge more.

In any case, for our first day in Shanghai, we went walking around, shopping and photographing. I bought some really nice pashminas and we went a bit mental in a bookshop that had a DVD floor. The Chinese really like awards of all sorts, specially the Oscars, so they have fifteen different kinds of Oscar box sets, oscar films in different covers and so on. I recently watched all the best Picture winners, some of which were quite hard to find. Here they were all… Even “Wings” from 1928, for 1 euro… I bought some that I had not seen and some that I’ll rewatch, like “Mrs. Minniver”, which is a great film btw. These were not illegal copies of the films, even though those are also easy to get from the streets – normally with English and Chinese subtitles… We had earlier come across to one seller, but they have already gone to Blue-Ray… What kind of world is it, when the pirates have a format that you cannot play???

We eventually walked as far as the people’s square and then home again, through a detour that seemed to take forever. The pushy-yelling Chinese tired us out so much that eventually we got into a ‘Family-Mart’ (Japanese 7-11 chain) and got salad and sushi for dinner in our hotel room… This is how much we missed Japan! China such a difference to Japan, where politeness is *everything* and here you are expected to be as agnry, impolite, rude, shouty, pushy and merciless as possible. You should spit on the streets and lie and cheat. The whole consept of the society is so different… It’s like my husband pointed out. You feel like you are in Japan, but it looks like everything is falling apart. When you come back to your hotel, you feel like you are never going to wear your clothes again, because they are so dirty.

I think for tomorrow, I need to learn how to bargain and cheat… We are going shopping again in the French concession.

Day 18/63

No offence to the capital of Japan, but I can see many more interesting ways of spending time in Japan, than to spend it in Tokyo.

We took a reserved seats in a Shinkansen for 18 minutes from Shin-Yokohama and boom! We are in Tokyo. Neither one of us really wanted to see particularly anything there, so we did what we normally do – looked for bookshops and samurai statues. There is a great, huge bookshop ‘The Maruzen’ right outside the Tokyo station. That is where we headed.

Normally when we are in these bookshops, I try to find some photo books to leaf through while my husband digs into the world of history books in Japanese. My Japanese is on the level of please and thank you, and perhaps “What is that?”, but no way near reading a book. Maruzen however, has a bid collection of English books, so I spent some time leafing through actual books. I found the Japanese equivalent to Nigella Lawson (English tv cook that I like) and decided to get her book just in case I feel adventurous back home by cooking some Japanese when I get back. Normally what I like to do after returning from travels is to have a sort of a soiree for my friends or family, to show them pictures from the trip and cooking them the local food. Of course if you come back from Germany, this means a trip to the Lidl with some beer and sauerkraut.

After book hunting (some of which we decided to order from Amazon later on to be delivered without a fuzz of posting them, straight to our homes), we walked along the emperial palace park to see a statue of samurai, Masashike Kusunogi on horse back. It was a good day, so we decided to try to get some author pictures of my husband for his book on the samurai, which is coming out in Autumn 2010. He just finished it before we left for this trip, but the publishers take a year to print it…

After walking back to the station, we then hopped onto the JR circle line to this park called Ueno, where thousands of Japanese were spending their holidays. There was a zoo near by, but we were much more keen on another samurai statue of Saigo Takamori. He has however comically brought his dog on the morning walk in his bathrobe with him into this statue – I wonder if he would have approved that one? Doesn’t quite give out the impression of a fearless warrior now does it?

Lunch opportunities in Ueno were poor and expensive, and even as the Chinese set meal in a delightful environment of a tea house would sound good to you, it certainly wasn’t impressing us very much. The food was tasteless noodles that didn’t go down well. We decided to walk off to see where we would end up, towards a temple that had many lanterns. We stumbled upon some pottery shops selling cheap kitchen stuff, which is where I decided to risk it and buy some. Perhaps they’ll survive to Finland in one piece, perhaps they won’t. Couple of Euros for a handmade sushi plate though, I was willing to take some chances.

Temple of the huge lantern was as crowded as Woodstock. There were stalls of tat sellers all around it on this area called Asakusa, which might sound amusing for a while, but after you’ve bought the essential series of sushi fridge magnets and blue wigs, you want to get the train back to the hotel. This is exactly what we did.

Tokyo to me, doesn’t provide anything that I couldn’t get from somewhere else in Japan. It’s a big city with big city’s problems. And even as it has the occasional parks, you’d still meet such crowds that I am happy not to live there. I think only now, I truly understand why Japanese act the way they do in Finland – running around like children if they see some forest. I would as well. A little nature is a great thing. My visit to Tokyo has made me appreciate the town where I live. Because for me it’s the best place in the world.

Day 16/63

We left Koriyama for Shin-Yokohama. In order to get there though, we needed to go through Tokyo. Shin-Yokohama is only there because of the shinkansen station. If we had stayed in Yokohama, we would have had to go through Shin-Yokohama anyways, so it was a very organized decision not to drag our luggage through that fuzz.

Our hotel in Shin-Yokohama is the Prince, which is a huge around 40 floors of hotel rooms complex. There is a queuing system to get to the reception, and around 10 elevators which will take you to the 32nd floor (where our room is) approximately faster than my elevator at work takes me to the 5th floor…

Our mission for the day was to check out Yokohama China Town, which is apparently the second biggest outside China. Yes it was huge. But unfortunately, at the end, it’s nothing but restaurants and tat for tourists and one pathetic little temple. Well, impressive temple, but in any case, I’ve been more impressed in my life. However, the food was excellent and I had a great time with my camera walking around the harbour area.

It’s a national holiday for the next three days which is kind of unfortunate and makes all the places to be absolutely booked out… I mean, even parks are seriously crowded. Yokohama is the most London city that I’ve ever met (besides London, I mean…) It’s got a kind of a river thing going on, with big buildings around it, amusements of all kinds and even a Yokohama-eye, a fareswheel.

It’s considerably more hot here again. It’s evident that we are no longer in the North, but now in the East of Japan, as they let you know. Our very carefully planned schedule gave us a needed time to breathe in the North and now we are charged up and ready to spear more heat. Yokohama is the second biggest city of Japan. So big in fact that it’s grown to be the same city as the biggest city in Japan. Which is 18 minutes away on the Shinkansen.

This concluded out time in Yokohama, nothing very special happened there concerning the samurai… However, tomorrow we are travelling close by for some more research in the form of Admiral Togo’s warship. As we’ve completed our missions so effectively, we will get a day in Tokyo. My husband is apparently letting me decide where to go there… I suppose some wikipedia time is called for.