Japan & Hong Kong Vacation Recap

I changed the theme on my blog last night. What do you think of the new layout and look? I’m really liking the change! I do have some little kinks to work out, but other than that I’m loving it.

Now that I’ve been back from my Asian vacation for 2 weeks, I thought I’d do a quick recap, highlight some of my favorite things, and share what I didn’t get to do that I want to do in the future.

Japan

My flight to Japan was a smooth 12-13 hour flight from Newark, NJ to Tokyo, Japan. Japan was amazing! The people are super nice, polite, and helpful. It’s also really clean there – even the public bathrooms were so clean! The food was good just like everyone told me it would be. I was told this in advance, but they really don’t speak much English in Japan. It’s hard to grasp that because you would think that people in such an advanced country would know English since it’s such prominent language in the world, but they don’t. You can definitely still get by though. Keep in mind though that a lot of restaurants don’t have English menus! It was extremely hot and humid. 100 degrees almost every day and humid. I don’t think I’ve ever sweat so much!

Some highlights from Japan:

• exploring Harajuku
• eating ramen!
• seeing a beautiful shrine & Buddha in Nara
• seeing The Golden Pavilion in person!
• and the beautiful Kiyomizu-dera Temple
• oh and I can’t forget learning to make sushi!

Tokyo is so big that I didn’t get to see nearly all the city. I definitely want to check out Tokyo Disney and Shibuya next time!

Hong Kong

The flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong was about 3 hours – much less daunting than the 15 hour flight back home a week later! Hong Kong was a little less sightseeing than Japan mostly because we spent a lot of time visiting family and shopping. But I really loved it too. It was humid, but not too hot since most days were cloudy due to the on/off rain. I guess that’s what happens when you visit during typhoon season! But it actually made it better because although the unpredictable weather limited what we could do it made walking around easier since we weren’t doing it in the heat. All the food was good and I liked taking photos of the city streets and views of the and from the harbor. Another plus – pretty much everyone I encountered knew English so it was easy to get around.

Some highlights from Hong Kong

• seeing the Big Buddha on Lantau Island
• going up the escalators in Central
• taking the Star Ferry across the harbor to Kowloon
• seeing the Symphony of Lights show
• the view from Victoria Peak
• getting high tea at The Peninsula
• and of course seeing family!

As mentioned above, the weather kept us from doing certain things/going to places we wanted to. On a future trip, I’d love to go to Hong Kong Disney, Macao, and I think my cousin mentioned going to Repulse Bay and Stanley.

You might know that I started collecting Starbucks mugs from places about 2 years ago. I think they make amazing souvenirs so of course I had to get them from Japan and Hong Kong. I also mentioned above that my family did a lot of shopping while in Hong Kong. As you can see in the above photo, I was not exaggerating! Normally my cousin and/or aunt & uncle bring back food and snacks for us but since we were there we picked up a lot of things.The photo of all the goodies was taken by my dad when he laid out everything on the sofa!

So much to do, see, and eat, but so little time even though I was gone for 2 weeks! All the more reason to return one day. Hopefully sooner rather than later!