Japan

Well... 7 days in Japan... Ranging from Osaka to Nagoya to Mt. Fuji to Tokyo. I must say that Japan is a really beautiful country with beautiful scenery and beautiful weather. A much needed break from the hot, humid, dirty and fast-paced city called Hong Kong. But being that it was with a Hong Kong based tour... we ended up doing a lot of shopping and a lot of bus-sitting then I would have preffered... but it was still a nice trip overall.

Highlights... bought some small decorative samurai swords... for... quite a bit of moola, but meh... something from Japan at least. Spent half-a-day at Expo 2005 at Aichi (not nearly enough time to check out everything available at Expo) but it was interesting. Spent 2 hours each in 2 separate line ups for some presentations. 1) The Hitachi presentation... a use of some new high-tech devices to view some endangered species presentations... and then a ride with 3d binoculars... to view 3d animals... and the ability to kind of interact with said animals through a device placed in your right hand. Pretty cool... but the 10 minute ride was not worth the 2 hour wait. 2) The Toshiba presentation... some new high-tech device that takes 3D photos of people... and then they used our photos and placed them into a movie... so we were the characters of a short movie that they had made up... it was pretty cool... and it was fun trying to find yourself in the movie. Spent some time visiting some of the country pavilions... but couldn't see the Canadian one because there was a huge line up for it (which is cool), but I was able to talk to one of the Canadian representatives about Hockey, haha... but I found out that we lost to the Czech Republic in the World Championships, sigh... that sucks. And apparently, Craig got booted from the Apprentice because he lacked communication skills.... and Kendra won season 3 of The Apprentice. And the Lowell Lockmonsters (Flames AHL team) lost in the 2nd round of playoff s as well. Mike Vernon and Gary Suter are both up for possible Hall of Fame induction this year as well.

Ummm... saw Mt. Fuji... I guess it was okay, didn't get up close, up close to it... so didn't get to really see a live volcano... but oh well... the best view of it was on the airplane from Tokyo to Hong Kong. :P Hmmm... didn't get to meet up with my friend in Tokyo though... it was too hard to organize... but I gave her a call at least... so that was cool. Ummm... okay... guess it's only 10 in the morning in Calgary right now... but it past midnight here... and I'm exhausted from 2 weeks of vacation... with only 5-7 hours of sleep every night... and tons of walking with little rest during the day. 3 more days... till back to Calgary.