After Kagoshima, the next stop was Miyajima. This stop in the trip was, I will admit, inspired by my Narutaru fandom. We took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima (it was quite a pleasant and scenic ride!), then took another train for twenty minutes to the town across from Miyajima. Then it was lunchtime!

Yum yum, eel! Apparently it was recently added to some sort of protected species list, and my cousin was telling me we shouldn’t eat it. Oops. Well, it was good. Continue reading Draggle’s Asian Journey Part VI: Miyajima →

After Okinawa, we flew to Kagoshima. I didn’t really have any set plans there, so we just wandered around town.

Apparently Kagoshima is very proud of being the home of Saigo Takamori.  Just wandering randomly around town, it seemed everything we ran into was related to Saigo Takamori.

Above is a monument for when his sword thrust through his mother’s vagina. Seriously, that’s the memorial for where he was born. We also saw the grave of his friends, the place he grew up in, the place where he died, his friend’s house… Continue reading Draggle’s Asian Journey Part V: Kagoshima →

We finally left Singapore, the world’s largest shopping mall. Next stop was a layover at the Shanghai airport before our next stop in Okinawa! If you just want food pictures skip to the bottom.

Shanghai Airport

My impression of China was that China is a giant shithole. We arrived at 4:30 AM, but the airport didn’t open until 6 AM for some reason, so we had to wait in this tiny little waiting room. There were all these cigarette butts on the floor in the bathroom and it stunk. When we finally got into the airport itself, we went through the security line, and at the end was a big pile of stale barf that looked like it had been there for days, surrounded by three security guards chatting who didn’t seem to notice it.

Had been thinking about staying in China longer but was grateful I didn’t.

Okinawa Sights

That evening, we arrived in Okinawa, in the capital, Naha. We had a little difficulty getting through Japanese customs due to our inability to understand Japanese addresses but eventually we made it.

Then we rode the monorail to our hotel! It was like Disney World but better. This girl who worked at the monorail helped me get tickets, she had such a big smile and a high pitched voice and said thank you to everyone who walked through the gate, it was kind of creepy, like a girl from anime. I knew we had arrived in Japan. Continue reading Draggle’s Asian Journey Part IV: Okinawa →

After Taiwan and Hong Kong, the next stop was Singapore.

This is the second time I’ve been to Singapore. To be honest… Singapore isn’t that great.  Basically, the entire city is a giant shopping mall. With the most miserable climate imaginable. The only reason I came back is because I have a ton of friends who live there that I wanted to visit. I probably stayed too long though, one of my friends wasn’t even in town. Continue reading Draggle’s Asian Journey Part III: Singapore →

Sorry, got distracted from this series of posts with the new season… For those who have forgotten, I was continuing from my trip to Hong Kong.

After Hong Kong I flew to Taiwan and met the friend I’d be spending the rest of the trip with in the airport. I’d been to Taiwan before two years ago, but he never had. Originally I had no intention of planning to go to Taiwan on this trip, but some of my friends from Taiwan invited me so I figured why not.

We got there late so we took a taxi to the hotel and went to sleep.

Tourist Crap

On the first morning, we took a bus to the National Palace Museum. I’d gone there last time but it had been closed for some reason so we’d had to go to the Aborigines museum instead. The National Palace Museum is essentially all the artifacts the Nationalists looted from the mainland as they fled. A lot of pots and calligraphy which I couldn’t read and couldn’t really appreciate. The museum was filled with obnoxious mainlander tourists. Seriously, they were obnoxious. Continue reading Draggle’s Asian Journey Part II: Taiwan →