Prescription? You don’t need a prescription. At the Jinan airport in China, there are the usual inflated-price bookstores, souvenier shops, and refreshment stands. There are also quite a number of places that sell Chinese herbs and medicines. At one stand, next to boxes of innocent and normal looking herbs was a lone bottle of viagra. It wasn’t behind glass, or with other friendly bottles of viagra, it was just there, with a little price tag stuck on the cap saying that it was about $110 USD. I asked a sales associate what viagra was for, but she didn’t seem to know or care.

There’s very little to do in Hong Kong except shop. Really. Loius, Gucci, Rolex, Starbucks, Giordano, cheap tourst crap. That’s all there is. Tomorrow is the last day. I’ll be home on the 23rd.

Tokyo
Shanghai missed flight
Jinan
Guilin
Yangshou, Longshen
Guilin
Guandong/Shenzen
Hong Kong
(Beijing)
(San Francisco)
(small)

Rewind: Guilin and friends, China:

On a boat, 4 hours through some of the most famous mountains in China and I’m taking pictures of ghosts that keep appearing in the window.

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Li River from Guilin to Yangshou, China.

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Longshen mountainside rice patties, visited at probably the absolute worst time…no rice–it had ben harvested, no water–no rice, no snow–too warm. I tried to do what I could.

There’s something about Japan that I can’t get over. I’d like to live there.

Shabu Shabu chef waiting, Tokyo.

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Traditional Shinto wedding at Meiji Shrine, Tokyo.

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Ebisu, Tokyo.

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Korean lunch with a view, Tokyo.

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Odiaba, looking back at Tokyo.

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Just keeping to myself.

Top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Looking out.

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A traditional Japanese house in Urayasu, Chiba.

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Saw Eric Clapton in Tokyo with my mother. Pretty awesome, save for the nosebleed last minute seats. Japanese concerts are a little awkward. At times, it was so quiet in the crowd of about 10,000 that if I had started clapping, everyone in the stadium would have been able to hear.

Clapton, Tokyo, 2006.

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The trains in Tokyo stop running around midnight, which leaves one to either walk home or take a very expensive taxi.

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Hotel Okura. Never updated from the 70′s. Rather eerie.

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Went to an Araki Nobuyoshi exhibit at the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Reinspired would be how I feel. Thanks Sam.

5 floor escalator.

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I’m absolutely fascinated by Japanese cutlery.

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I visited Yasakuni Shrine today (*gasp!*). I went to the Japanese war museum. I’m not sure what all the hub bub is about. It’s a beautiful shrine with absolutely no foreign tourists–it actually felt like a shrine. Yes, it does honor a bunch of class A Japanese war criminals, but if the U.S. had lost, FDR and Eisenhower would been convicted as war criminals. The museum catalogs Japan’s bellicostic past with items such as actual 500 year old samurai armor. So, Hu Jin Tao, now that Shinzo Abe (current Japanese PM) has stated that he won’t visit Yasakuni Shrine, perhaps you could stop showing anti-Japanese propaganda films every Chinese National Day.

One of the Yasakuni Shrine Tori by day.

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Hungry hungry hippos. Normally fish scatter at the sight of a sillhoutte along the banks of a pond. These coy have been pavlovianlly taught to gather and suck at the top of the water in hopes of catching some fish food (Y100 per box).

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Yasakuni entrance by night.