Ask any Korean the best time of year to visit Seoul, and chances are they’ll say October; summer’s too hot (true), winter’s too cold (but good if you like skiing), spring’s lovely if you time it just right for the cherry blossoms, but visit in October and you’re virtually guaranteed pleasant weather (unless you get unlucky with a typhoon,
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While I do despise the YouTube algorithm as a radicalisation & bullshit engine that human society would be better off without, I must grudgingly admit that it does occasionally dig you up a gem.
It suggested this beauty recently after I’d been listening to some of the Blade Runner soundtrack:
I knew I’d heard that haunting vocal somewhere before;
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It’s been a long, hot summer in northeast Asia, with Korea and Japan both suffering record-breaking heatwaves. Things are finally cooling off somewhat here in Seoul, but my recent research trip to Japan coincided with their hottest temperatures on record and it was ridiculous, worse even than the summer I spent in the cauldron of Kyoto while working there a few years ago.
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From this distance the train appears to be suspended in the air across the valley, high above the river and motionless with its lights standing out like beacons against the backdrop of brooding forest in the deepening gloom. The tinny sounds of station announcements and departure chimes waft over on the breeze,
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Japanese folklore is a rich tapestry of mischievous spirits, child-eating monsters, and shape-shifting animals, a little knowledge of which can give great insight into the culture when you visit.
Most trips to Japan will involve visiting some (usually many) temples, shrines,
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Kyoto has so many shrines & temples, where do you even start?
There’s no way you can see them all in a short visit (I haven’t come close even after many visits and living there for over a year), and if you tried you’d soon find yourself suffering from a bad case of temple fatigue.
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If it’s your first few days in Tokyo, chances are you have a to-do list including the usual spots like Asakusa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Meiji Shrine. But how about if you’ve done all that before? If that’s the case, here are a few random ideas for some cool stuff to do or places to check out in Tokyo –
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Tokyo’s quite an amazing city for shopping – if you’re looking for electronics, home furnishings, toiletries, medicine, beauty products, luggage, clothes, etc, you can find them all over the city; the myriad department stores and big chains like Uniqlo, BIC Camera, and Donki Hotei make it easy to find whatever you’re looking for.
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Having never seen an episode, I know very little about Gundam other than that it’s a classic Japanese anime about giant mecha robots defending the Earth, or something like that (I’m more of an Evangelion fan).
But you don’t really need to know the show to appreciate a giant life-sized robot statue (especially one that does light displays while it transforms),
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I first heard of Hong Kong’s old Kowloon Walled City in William Gibson’s Idoru
A lawless, ramshackle, and insanely densely populated corner of Hong Kong,
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You’re woken up by the sound of an old man violently expectorating in the hutong alleyway outside, cringing during the pause while he holds his mouthful of phlegm for a second or two between noisily bringing it up and noisily depositing it on the floor with typically exaggerated sound effects.
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We were two weeks into our epic road trip around the US, now driving through the incredible southwestern states of New Mexico and Arizona; we’d just spent two days in Albuquerque for the July 4 Independence Day celebrations (and also one of my companion’s birthdays), and the next point of call was the Grand Canyon.
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“Sir,” she said in a suddenly stern voice, “your bag’s tested positive for amphetamines.”
My jaw hit the floor. My bag? Amphetamines? You what?
I was standing in the customs area of Christchurch Airport, the entire contents of my bags laid out before me on the cold metal counter,
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“Stop chatting to your girlfriend and get back to work, you Pommie cunt!”
The speaker was my supervisor, and we were in a Queensland tomato field pruning vines. My ‘girlfriend’ was my male coworker who, being a white Australian, couldn’t really be subject to the usual racial or national insults so was instead a ‘blooming pufter’
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I looked along the deck at the picture of youthful beauty alongside me, all the long tanned legs and all the long blond hair fluttering in the breeze, and I looked out at all the beauty around us, all these magnificent tropical islands with their perfect white sand beaches;
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If you’re in China on a tourist (L) visa and want to get more time in the country without having to go down to Hong Kong for a new visa, you may be able to extend your existing visa at a Public Security Bureau office.
The extension rules officially require you to have several thousand dollars in a Chinese bank account –
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Naked children leapt from the ramshackle pier in the tropical downpour, laughing and screaming as lightning flickered across the edges of a sky as threatening as any I’ve yet seen.
“That boat?” I asked hopefully, indicating the larger and (slightly) more seaworthy-looking of the two pieces of junk lashed to the pier.
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“There, there!” he kept shouting, “go straight, go straight!”
I kicked on through the murky water, peering through my goggles into the plankton-deepened gloom before me but seeing nothing.
“Where, where?” I yelled to the spotter on the boat, surfacing and looking back to shout, “I can’t see it!”
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I was just going through some old photos and found this one of a pop-up street barber near my old place in Beijing. There isn’t much of a travel blog post I can write to go with it, but it shows a side of Beijing (and China) quite different from the grandeur of the Forbidden City or the Greatness of The Wall.
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Seeing the cherry blossoms in spring probably tops the wishlist for most travellers visiting Tokyo, but an equally awesome time to visit the Japanese capital is during the autumn colours (the Japanese word is koyo, 紅葉, literally ‘red leaves’). The cherry trees are first (and least spectacular),
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