Kansai 2009 Travel Notes: Floating Garden

the floating garden at osaka umeda was out first target because it was strongly suggested by mrs. lee and recommended by lamb.

after satisfying ourselves with a hot bowl of soup ramen, we braved the chilly wind in a 15 minutes walk from umeda underground station, somewhat surprised by the many cycling commuters coming in the opposite direction.

the building, situated in a new commercial office area at umeda, looked like a rocket launching platform firmly structured on top of two skyscrapers.



most impressed me was however not architectural nor technological.

of course the building was splendidly built and modern, but it was the space afforded to visitors that made it special.



a see-through elevator shooting up at a decent speed gave us much excitment, and presented us with an nice but not quite magnificant night-view of osaka.



our heart, however, was immediate touched as we stepped on the top floor, when we saw a spacious hall with well designed cubicals for lovers to enjoy a private time and space.



no wonder the floor is named a "lover sanctuary"



japanese are truly polythesism: birth/seijin shiki (coming-of-age) with buddism, wedding with christianity, and funeral with shinto, and so it is only natural to find a church at the lovers' paradise.

Visit this website to check out the possible arrangment provided by the sky building bridal salon: http://umeda-sky-wedding.jp/




the rooftop is assessible and the lumi sky walk offered a unhindered all-around view of osaka.



only a few osaka residents were there that night, and costing only 700 yen each person, we wondered where the lovers would have a better place to go - the fact that there were better places to go really made us envious of the life there.

Chinese New Year Shopping 2009

we are 新界人 and so we take advantage of the many nurseries in the new territories that offer direct purchase of peach blossom and kumquet.



the one our family used to go is situated at chung uk tsuen, and the peach blossom stems are still rooted in ground.



dad chose one a couple of weeks ago and the guy there cut off the stem with a blunt saw, taking ages to finish.



parents also chose a pot of kamquet this year, hoping to make preserved kamquet.



we then visited yuenlong to buy cut-flowers and sweets, and i was impressed by this busy women shopkeeper at this cut-flower shop yelling: 快!快!有錢開眼!

Kansai 2009 Travel Notes: Railways

i find myself obsessed by everything about riding a train in japan.

a large variety of railways and trains were there to explore and experience, starting with nankai's (南海電鉄) rapi:t taking us from kansai airport to namba, hankyu (阪急電鉄) showing us around suburban osaka and carrying us to kyoto, and JR's haruka (関空特急)returning us back to kansai.

just finding the right railways to travel alone can send your pulse racing, for there are five private railway companies (私鉄) and the japan rail (JR) operating in the keihanshin (京阪神) region.

we were fortunate to bump into the nanaki 50000 series train at kansai airport station, and what a smart train for our first ride in the trip (see the pictures below).

the staff at the ticket office helping us with our direction

amazed to find out this design known as "outdated future"

our lack of japanese training was not a problem, as four tickets to namba station (難波駅) were settled easily after we showed the staff at the ticket office the name of the hotel.

buying tickets from an automatic vending machine was not so smooth the first time, and in fact we occupied a machine for nearly five minutes and we must have caused a somewhat significant loss of overall productivity in japan for that day.


a series of automatic ticket vending machines

after all we were not so stupid and we worked out that the machines were fare-oriented design - first work out the fare from the railway line map, then insert money, and finally press the required fare button and number of passengers, phew!

as the oldest member in the group i like the classic train carriages used on the hankyu railways - they are painted venerable dark red on the outside and with bench seats against yellowish wall on the inside.


EMU series 6000 leaving ikeda station 池田駅


Juso station 十三駅 is a major interchange

Ibaraki-shi Station 茨木市駅

mrs. lee made sure that we did not let China down and we did our utmost to observe the manners of riding a train, which simply meant not talking, turning off the phone ringing, keeping away from priority seats and acting like a tourist - so to avoid being frown upon for any unwilling infringement. a popular book in japan called 大阪学 describes that osaka is the japanese city that is not so manner-abiding, though we did not notice such things such as phone ringing or taking advantage of priority seats.



well, watching the beautiful scenic along the railroads with only the rhythms of the tracks in the background was most enjoyable.


sunset on the train returning to osaka from Ibaraki-shi

Second Half Begins

40 is widely regarded as the divider, the watershed, the intermission between two halves. i am anyway grateful to have my family and good friends cheering me walking past the threshold. i can only say God has been very good to me.



a lovely card from YC the great illustrator - i could understand the LHS of the equation but what is on the other side? i like the idea.



B the black sheep took the k group to a restaurant at the scout association - 金陶軒. she backed us in an early warning sms about the best dishes - 糖醋排骨, only not it did disappointed but we were overly satisfied with most others too - 炸牛坑腩, 小吃. we talked so little at meal time - just because we were always a mouthful