Konnichiwa!

As some of you have already known that my finals had already ended, and I’m now on my way to the big apple city. Since I’m travelling alone before meeting up with my friends on the 23rd, such a situation reminds me of a song, which is also Susie’s all-time favourite.

“I’m a big big girl, in a big big world, it’s not a big big thing, if you leave me…”
Okay. Only the first 2 sentences are relevant in this case. I’ll be departing from Seattle Tacoma (SEATAC) airport instead of Vancouver airport, so this journey is another long one for me.^_^ But I totally have adopted the resistance and quietness while travelling alone since this is not the first time for me.

So, this is only half of my journey so far, as I’m now still sitting in the SEATAC airport.

8.35 a.m- Bus ride to the required bus stop for pick up

9.35 a.m- Picked up. Another bus ride to SEATAC.



11.00 a.m- Stuck in the Seattle Custom for 40 minutes. A little bit of story here, I was required to pay a fee cost 6 USD, and the smallest note I had was 50 dollars. So, the officer gave me that fierce look and said “small notes or credit card”. So I ended up swapping my credit card to pay 6 dollars, what a crap.



2.10 p.m- Reached SEATAC. I thought my luggage went overweight again when I saw “35.5” on the electronic weighing machine, but it was actually in lb. PHEW, I swear I made an effort to travel light and I made it. Custom was quite strict, no friendly faces. They greeted me by asking me to take off my shoes, and took out my laptop.

2.30 p.m- I’m here sitting and blogging.

So my next destination is Long Beach, then Washington.

Ja ne !

One night sit in Hong Kong airport

The night before I reached K.L, I spent 13 hours in the Hong Kong international airport because my connecting flight departed on the next day. Looking at the time I reached the airport and the amount of luggages I was carrying, having a brief city trip was a bad idea although my previous visit on this oriental land exceeded 10 years, far before the existence of Hong Kong Disneyland and Star Walk.

Erhmm erhmm. So there comes my first experience of sleeping overnight in the airport.

Prior to this, I had a little mind mapping on the possible things I could do there, like sticking myself to the laptop at a coffee shop, or simply buying a magazine and start up some reading. Well well, it was my bad neglecting the tiny little things which turned out to be so important that they ruined my plan to nowhere. I had no problem spending the first 2 hours with my laptop and re-packing my luggage, till my laptop was exhausted and there the ordeal began. I totally forgot about the converter since my laptop charger couldn’t fit in the plug. I then tried to look for a converter to solve the problem but I failed.

Empty

So my laptop passed out that day, and my MP3 took up the responsibility to accompany me. I spent another few hours by having my meal, MP3-ing,writing diary, talking to my mom, playing with my phone and then watching people passing by desperately. To me, it was really one of those helpless moments in life.

Empty

There’s always the bright side opposing the dark one. Because of the loneliness, I threw myself some time to go into deeper thinking, which was totally uninterrupted. When the lights were turned off one by one ,slowly and inactively, I started rewinding my mind to look back at things I wished I could have thought of a solution.

Empty

Looking at myself, I’ve already passed the age to do things rebelliously and can still blame on my adolescence. I’ve already lost some opportunities to work on things I wished I could have done it at that very significant moment.Despite of all these failures in life, I’ve reached this far and accomplished more, especially on those things I would never expect myself to have the courage to begin with. I believe in sacrificing part of my life to fix a bigger part of my life, just like everything needs an opportunity cost in the world of economics, when balance isn’t the best way to harmonize life. The thing is, I have to accept my life for what I’ve been given, accept every decision made by myself and the others who tend to influence my life. Because I don’t live alone,and my life is chained to someone else. Because I only hold half of myself, and let go the other half, to tolerate the intolerable people and things.

Empty

Back to the real world, people sitting beside me kept on changing, until there were few left.We were sitting in the same boat,I could see that they were dying for their next flight as well, just like the pathetic me . Then I entertained myself by walking around in the empty airport when all shops were closed.

Empty

It was a special night.Of course,I'm thinking it from the bright side to make me say this. Hey,at least I took some photos of the empty airport to share with some of you whom haven been put into the same shoes. Empty airport can be quite cool to see for a first timer like me. Empty airport wasn't scary itself, but the self-haunting thought made it scary.

What a sleepless night I had !

My Incredible 8 hours in Japan.

Before reaching Vancouver, I had a transit in Japan for 10 hours, which meant to be walking around the city for 8 hours, leaving the remaining 2 hours for the on board preparation.

When I reached the Kansai Airport, I put my hand carry at a storage rental, it was priced 700 yen per day for 2 small luggages.

After that,I went to the Tourist Information center to sign up for a short trip in Sakai,Osaka before I'm off to the next flight. I bought package A,which was a map-based walking tour at the price of 1600 yen ( about RM 50+). It's altogether 9 destinations on the map, and there are all within walking distance and not too far from each other, finish visiting the 9 points will lead me the way back to the Sakai station, in which I'll take a 37 minutes train ride back to the airport.

The receptionist briefed me on the walking tour before I proceeded to the ticket collection.

There I started my incredible cultural tour on foot, without knowing the way and using my limited Japanese proficiency to ask about it.Just with a map and train timetables.

Map of the day.






It was my first time having this kind of experience, to have no one to guide me throughout the trip, and my schedule was very flexible and manipulative.



It was a Friday morning, and the street seemed to be rather quiet, a huge contrast to the lifestyle in Tokyo. Everyone was walking so fast in Tokyo that I never walked slow when I was in Tokyo, I know this was the speed I had to follow.

Sugawara Shrine,菅原神社







Japanese have a habit of writing down their wish or prayer on a wooden tablet (Ema,絵馬 in Japanese), and hang it at the shrine.

Just like the Chinese, they have Omikuji where some random fortunes are written on the paper. The Omikuji predicts a person's future and whether his hope will come true in any matter. The bearer keeps the Omikuji if it turns out to be a good fortune, or else he/she will tie it onto a string ( or a pine tree) in the temple ground when the prediction is bad.


I left the Shrine after 15 minutes and headed to another temple, the Honganji temple.

Honganji temple,本願寺堺别院







Continue walking for about 10 minutes, I reached another temple, Myokokuji temple.

Myokokuji Temple,妙国寺







There was no one collecting the entrance ticket. I just went in and had a brief look at it, I felt awkward, as though I was an intruder, but with an entrance ticket.

Walk, walk, walk and walk, and I found the Sakai Knife Museum.









I'm quite attracted to the wide variety of knives showed in the Museum, those that I barely see in life- Those knives used for cutting Japanese food like,sushi,soba,kashi,beef and even whale.=O
(The knife used to fillet the whale is the longest and biggest one in the first picture.)


Yaki Soba Teshoku

On my way to these tourist spots, I did some shopping whenever I see a supermarket ,pharmacy (the Kusuri store), or shopping malls as I did not have adequate time to do them separately on a shopping tour. This was why my walking tour was dragged to 7 hours instead of the required time of 4 hours for the trip alone.



Besides that, I had some hard time finding the way to some of the hot spots and it took me round and round before I could reach. To worsen the problem, I lost my way back to the Sakai station that it procrastinated my train time, it took me 90 minutes to go back ,far more than the estimated time. By time I reached the airport, checked in and picked up my hand luggages, it was already 5p.m( My flight was at 5.25p.m).
So...so.... I ran all the way madly for a few hours.

This was why I called it an incredible and shocking journey, also my first time traveling alone, really alone.