One of the great things we love about Hong Kong is that although it is a typical big city with crowded streets, traffic jams and high rises everywhere in sight, there are beautiful and spacious green public areas to be found in the midst of this concrete jungle. The Hong Kong Park in Central provides a lovely respite away from the buzz of Hong Kong ( Read more... )

Although our latest trip to Hong Kong was not a pleasure trip, I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of non-grocery-related shopping. Some would argue that there's always room for shopping even on a business trip, but I actually need to know where the good shopping areas are. I'm not much of a shopper myself, but my sister Honey is, and shortly ( Read more... )

Last week, people in Japan enjoyed Golden Week, a string of four national holidays set very close to each other. Both my husband and sister were working on those holidays, and it seemed like everyone but us were enjoying Golden Week. The last of the Golden Week was Children's Day, and Rob gave Zak and I a pleasant surprise by saying he was coming ( Read more... )

On our third and final full day in Seoul, we headed on an hour-long journey on the subway to Suwon to check out Hwaseong Fortress. The fortress was where we wanted to go, but the palace was where we'd ended up at. Zak had fallen asleep in his stroller en route to Suwon Station, and because he hadn't slept very well during the trip, we wanted to ( Read more... )

One of the things Rob wanted to do during our Korea trip was to visit the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). Due to the, er, somewhat hostile nature of the area, I wasn't very keen on bringing our 18 month old to the DMZ, so we decided that we would split up for just a day during our trip to Seoul. When I was researching about DMZ tours, I was struck by how ( Read more... )

There's a reason for the silence on my blog for the past week: the family had an extended weekend trip to Seoul, and we only just got back home to Tokyo. It was a good Seoul experience, but I must say that I never thought I'd be so glad to hear and speak Japanese again, as crap as my ability may be. We ate a lot of Korean food, and I have heaps of ( Read more... )

Rob usually works on public holidays, but on Monday, a national holiday in Japan for the vernal (spring) equinox, he made the spontaneous decision to take the day off. It was a lovely spring day, and we headed out to Shinjuku Gyoen to enjoy the blue skies and calm weather. Honey took a couple of hours off work to join us since she hasn't been to ( Read more... )

We've been living in Japan for almost 4 years (in Tokyo for almost 3), yet we had never before been inside Tokyo Tower, one of the more well-known icons of Tokyo. I've been to a few towers around Japan, including the Umeda Sky Building during our first trip to Osaka, and the Landmark Tower in Yokohama, and while the structures themselves were ( Read more... )

After spending the afternoon and evening looking at the beautiful snow and ice sculptures at the Yuki Matsuri, we stayed for only one night in Sapporo before heading out very early the next morning to Furano for our snowboarding trip. It was a 3-hour bus ride from Sapporo, but we were glad that I'd chosen this ski region rather than the very ( Read more... )

Autumn is my favourite season of the year, both in Australia and Japan. I just love the weather during this season, and in Japan we get to enjoy coloured leaves. Coloured leaves are to the Japanese autumn what cherry blossoms are to spring. Just like the Japanese tradition of hanami ("flower viewing") during the sakura (cherry blossoms) season in ( Read more... )