Shanghai baby!
Mar 17, 2011 by Sushi Bird
Good news:
- We are in Shanghai. The lineup at Narita airport in Japan was crazy, but everyone is really good at standing in line.
- The hotel room is absolutely gorgeous and extravagant, and I think it is the nicest hotel room I have ever stayed in. (Pictures to follow.)
- There is complimentary internet, and I have access to both my email and my webpage.
Bad news:
- A lot of the webpages I frequent are blocked. Facebook, youtube, twitter, bloglovin, blogspot… So surfing the internet is kind of a limited experience.
- I am trying to think that I am on holiday and all is fine and dandy, but I feel such sadness in my heart for the poor people in Japan who are affected by the recent affairs. I very rarely cry over a country, but I my heart feels heavy for Japan.
I think we all need a break if we can manage to have one though, and I am lucky enough to get such a break right now. So I will try to enjoy my week in Shanghai. (Before I return to Tokyo.) Now that I know my computer is working from here, I can even blog. However, if you are friends with me on facebook (or any other place) I am not sure I will bother trying to access the pages by proxy. Maybe living facebook-free for a week will be a nice experience. I am available through sushibird.com and also via email for the ones who know me.
In general terms though, and I am very sorry if I offend any Chinese people (or China-loving people) that might read this, but I really do not think China is my cup of tea the same way that Japan is. That being said, I have only been here for a day. And that being said, I have other friends who LOVE China and have minimal interest in Japan, so I guess the taste differs a lot from person to person. I am not trying to say China is not nice, because it is, it is just very different than what I am used to. I know that people who are not that interested in Asia think that all East Asian countries are similar, but oh my god, the differences! (For me it would be to compare say… Norway and Spain?) I will make a separate post about the differences between Japan and China when I have actually been here a bit longer. So far, people here are kind of loud and have no sense of the 30 cm of personal space I am used to, and they stare. I thought I was not going to be stared at having dark hair at all, but I guess the foreigner-factor still counts for me, despite my dair hair.
But all is well and dandy in Lala-land, and now I am going out to take some pictures and eat some food and try to forget about the rest of the world.
Haha, imagine the staring if you were taller, wider, blonder and/or somewhere other than Shanghai. 😉 It is really interesting who completely different things are considered rude in different cultures.
Yeah, I am still amazed with just how different China is from Japan.
Thinking of you! xo
Thank you! All is good and I am having a good vacation 🙂
I share some of your feelings about China, it’s very different to Japan. People are so nice and helpful in Japan and I love that they are so disciplined and that they stand in line everywhere even at the escalators, ha ha 😀 I went from Shanghai to Tokyo and the experience was completely different; I acted like a Chinese the first few hours of my stay in Japan, just ignored all the lines, because I was used to competing with the Chinese to get a seat on the train or even to get on the trains and stuff like that. Japan is nothing like the other East Asian countries, but they’re all charming in their own way, I <3 Asia! 🙂
I wasn’t used to the fact that people do not line up, so getting on the metro people kept cutting in front of me, and I was just thinking “What the ??”. Then I noticed that _everybody_ was doing the same thing, so I kind of clued in and started cutting in line myself.