Ofer and I have been spoiled by Japan and Hong Kong. Clean streets, kind people, good smelling hotel rooms. I was starting to feel confident that this whole traveling thing wasn’t going to be as hard as I had initially anticipated.

Then we stepped out of the airport in China. We got into the line and we were led to our car. With suitcases and backpacks in the trunk and our driver informed of our destination we climbed into the back seat. Once the doors were shut and the cab started on its way Ofer and I looked at each other. Something was wrong. There were no seat belts! As Americans we have been trained not to ride in a car unless there are working seat belts, something Ofer and I both feel very strongly about. We started digging in between the seats, maybe they had been sandwiched there by overweight American tourists who weren’t concerned about seat belt safety. But our hands came back empty.

Hold the phone...something else is wrong. Our cab driver is a suicidal maniac. Once out of the terminal we were being thrown around in the back seat of his car like kernels of pop corn in an old fashioned popcorn popper. He sped and weaved between busses and cars with a grimace on his face, this obviously was not a happy man. “We’re really not in a hurry” I told him coyly when what I really wanted to say “Check your blind spots, you lunatic, do you drive get-away-cars on your days off??!” No response from the front seat. As we swerved and jerked back and forth Ofer and I decided that we would check his blind spots for him, as if this would help at all. Once we tried to so, we noticed something else was wrong. Everything was a blind spot! There was newspaper covering every window in the car but the front window. We were the car version of a horse with blinders on, only the one leading the horse was an angry Chinaman who lacked a fear of death.

My big powerful future husband started getting red. “This is ridiculous he said, where did this guy learn to drive!!” Then the car sped up and we dodged trucks and motorcycles with more speed. “Stop it, he may understand English” I said to Ofer in my bastardized version of Hebrew. Instead I did what any woman in this situation would do; I become my mother. I pulled out a pen and paper and proceeded to write down every name and number I saw posted in his car. The city of Shanghai will benefit from us getting this guy’s license taken away.

As we held hands and watched out the front window we noticed that the streets were becoming less and less busy. In fact we were in an area with what seemed to be houses with no doors and sometimes no roof, people squatting out on the streets relieving themselves, people clearing the phlegm in their throats so loud we could hear it in our moving car and smells that would make you not eat for days. “Holy Crap, he understood what we were saying and he is taking us to an area to kill us”, this is honestly what went through my head and judging by the look on Ofer’s face his thoughts were not too far off. We then took a sharp right turn and saw a large hotel a hundred feet away from the street.

You know movies where they show you some beautiful home with a freshly painted facade, a gentle breeze plays with the flowers that line the perimeter...you can almost smell the fresh baked bread wafting from the open window. Then the light changes and you watch as the years go by, the paint cracks, the porch swing crookedly falls off it’s perch, the flowers become a distant memory and the glow of the home where you could picture a family growing inside is replaced by creaks and bad dreams and the smell of wood and plants rotting. Yep this was what it was like. We had both seen the picture of the hotel online but it must have been taken at least 30 years ago. It looked like a deserted haunted house although it was clearly populated considering how many cars were in the parking lot.

Welcome to China.

That was the first of a string of things to go wrong with the hotel. Once inside we were told to only take cabs out of the hotel because it isn’t safe to walk the streets. The first room they put us in had not been cleaned and still had tissues and bedsheets strewn on the floor. They second room they put us in had no internet, they had to send their IT guy in to run a cable into our room. Then the next day they forgot to send us the wake up call we had ordered. Smelly sheets, a bathroom that smelled like don’t even ask what, dirt and grime on the carpets. Not to mention the fact that they claimed to have a workout room and a olympic size pool of which there were neither...details. We were home.

Ofer and I both know a lot of people who have visited China and loved it. There is so much that colors your experience of a country; who you meet, who you’re with, the places you end up sleeping and eating. Not to mention how comfortable you are in general about traveling to a foreign place. Maybe for us it was the contrast from coming from Hong Kong and Japan. But China was our first real culture shock on this trip.

When we first walked to a busy area looking to grab a bite to eat we waited for the street light to change (Japan had trained us well). Once our ‘walk’ symbol was displayed, hand and hand we began to cross the intersection. Not more than 2 feet ahead of us a motorcycle plowed across our path, then another. I looked to the right and saw that no one even slowed down at the red light. Once we got the hang of the fact that streetlights mean absolutely nothing, we were fine. But the shock of stepping off the sidewalk thinking we had the right of way to cross and nearly getting killed by a motorcycle definitely showed us how incredibly differently cities operate.

There were many more things that we were not accustomed to that at first came as a pretty big shock, especially since we had just come from Japan and Hong Kong. One thing is, there is a lot of spitting that goes on in China. I know you don’t want to hear about it but trust me hearing about it is a lot better than being the indirect recipient of the splash. And it isn’t just, “Oh, ew a bug just flew in my mouth, let me get it out!” nope it is a full-fledged, Leonardo De Caprio in Titanic, from the pit of your stomach spit. And both men and women do it. They don’t hide it. They do it everywhere and at anytime. It’s lovely.

I also need to dedicate at least one paragraph to toilets. It took us less than a day to recognize that we were no longer in the land of heated toilets with flowery sprays and courtesy flush sounds. I remember the first time I saw a real China toilet. We were on our day trip and it was suggested to us to use the bathroom. I waited in a line (I use the word ‘line’ loosely because in China people had no intention of waiting their turn in a line, if they saw an opportunity to get in front of someone else, they took it) behind 10 Chinese woman and children. Once it was my turn I walked toward the open stall. I quickly glanced to my right and saw a stall without a door and a young lady about 18 years old squatting above a hole in the floor. I looked at her and she looked at me, no embarrassment, nothing. Obviously I was the odd-man out.

I reached my stall and walked in. I shut the door behind me. You can imagine the smell, I’m not even going to go into that. All there was, was a porcelain hole in the ground. I stared at the hole...the hole gaped right back at me. Who was going to win, me or the hole. I looked around for toilet paper. Nope. Just as I was convincing myself that this was an ‘experience’ I felt a gush of water splash over my foot from the stall next to me. The hole won...I left. Hole: 1 Shayna: 0.

So apparently how it works, is no toilet paper is used, once you are done you wash anything remaining on yourself or the ground down with a bucket of water you bring in with you. After your delusions of yourself as a ‘lady’ are shattered you then walk out to the sink. There are three things that I now very much appreciate in a bathroom sink: water, soap and paper towel/dryer. If you have one, there is a very good chance that you don’t have another. Paper towel I can do without, I am getting used to that. But no soap? That’s another story. In China Ofer and I learned our lesson, we started bringing tissues and hand sanitizer everywhere we went.

OK, so China is very different from what we have seen before on this trip. That’s fine. Now it is time for us to mold ourselves to be comfortable here. This is how it was going to be for the next few weeks.

We had a one-day tour set up in Shanghai. We saw so much in that one day. There are some positives and negatives about tour guides. The positives: We don’t have to plan where we are going, how to get there, how much to pay the driver, when/ where we are going to eat etc. Everything is laid out for us and we don’t have to think at all, something Ofer and I enjoy and try to do as much as possible. Negatives: They take you mostly to the tourist traps (although some are things we do really want to see), there is a good chance that we won’t understand their English through their accent and more often than not they bus us to places and encourage us to buy (they get a cut of whatever it is that we purchase).

Our guide took us through to the ancient city wall, the Grand Canal, the ancient town of Suzhou, Zhouzhang Water Village and to a silk factory where you can watch the process from silk worms eating mulberry leaves to the finished product of a silk tapestry. A lot of the silk factories are now mostly machine operated but we were lucky to visit a factory where every step was done by hand. It was amazing to watch, really made us appreciate the work that goes into creating even just one silk pillowcase.

Ofer had been talking for MONTHS about going to the World Expo. In fact that might have been his major reason for wanting to visit Shanghai. He was really excited to see the Switzerland Exhibit because they apparently had a roller-coaster. We had been getting reports that it takes hours of standing in line to enter one of the countries expositions but we needed to check it our on our own.

I have to start by saying China is HOT in August. Very very hot. Most people carried umbrellas with them to protect themselves from burning and over heating. And all around the Expo there were areas where you can stand and be sprayed by water in order to try to cut the heat. We asked around and found out that the only Expo that doesn’t have a line is Africa. No line sounded good to us so we headed in that direction. The Africa Exhibit was in a huge space (as was everything, really) and had stands inside from different countries. It was fun to walk around and to visit the stands of the countries that we are planning to visit on this trip.

We decided to be brave and head out in the heat toward the Switzerland Exhibit. Once we got there we were told that the roller-coaster was temporarily closed. Of course. So instead we walked around and found the Spain Exhibit, which looked really cool from the outside. We waited in line for about 2 hours and snaked around the outside of the building. Every ten minutes or so we were lucky to be under a spicket that would spray us with cool water. This trip is starting to make me understand why people in other parts of the world feel the need to shower 2 or 3 times a day. The Exhibit was pretty amazing. It was mostly made up of multimedia displays showing different videos and pictures from Spain. In front of the first screen was a woman dancing to dramatic Spanish music. Next we saw a huge replica of a baby. A huge freaky non-human looking baby. Why this was part of the Exhibit, I can’t tell you. I think people were intrigued by it because, like us, they were pretty disturbed by it. The entire Exhibit lasted about 5 minutes. As admittedly cool as the exhibits were the heat was really brutal. And the more we saw the more we were excited to see most of these places in person.

That’s the thing about China. It is very difficult for people from China to travel outside of their country. In fact whether we were on the street or on the Great Wall people seemed to be in awe of us. Internet (granted restricted internet), TV and people traveling to their country are their only access to the outside world. In fact, many times we were stopped by locals and asked to be in their pictures. So we could see why the Expo was so popular. This was their opportunity to see the world because there was a very good chance that most of the people standing in those lines for hours upon hours and going for multiple days have never and will never leave China.

When living in New York I was introduced to Shanghai Soup Dumplings. If you don’t know what this is I highly suggest googling it and trying them. They are absolutely delicious. My favorite restaurant is Joe’s Shanghai, however since Ofer and I now found ourselves in Shanghai I was determined to try the original. I think I made Ofer try them in at least 6 different restaurants, no joke. We must have eaten at least 50 Shanghai Soup Dumplings in Shanghai along with countless other Dim Sum treats. I don’t know if it is just brand loyalty but I have to admit we liked Joe’s Shanghai the best! Ofer and I kept ourselves busy in Shanghai, we went to the highest observation deck in the world in the Shanghai World Trade Center. We attended an amazing acrobatic show, we ate local cuisine, we got sick from local cuisine and we went to our first night club in Asia.

By the time we loaded into our final cab to head for the airport we laughed at how much had changed. Our first driver in Shanghai wasn’t crazy, he was just doing what everyone else did in China. A driver who stayed within the lines and didn’t sit on his horn was the exception to the Chinese rule not the outlier. By the end of our week in Shanghai we had gotten used to being thrown around in the car, needing to just keep our eyes closed during the journey and not even look for seat belts. It had taken a pretty good initial shake but China had officially broken us in.

I have to begin this blog by saying WE LOVE HONG KONG. We love it, love, I am using the word love here. We would honestly consider living here for a year or so if the opportunity arose. It is a spectacularly beautiful city with interesting architecture, lush mountains, an incredible night-life and western-friendly people. It really is the definition of East meets West.
We had no idea coming in that we would like Hong Kong so much. We had each heard great things from friends and family but landing in the airport we were really just expecting to see just another city.

Once Ofer and I left the airport we boarded a double decker bus bound for Hong Kong Island. We sat on the second level and watched the city get closer and closer over the next hour. The closer we got the more excited we were. It was so beautiful: a city towering over it’s harbor surrounded by lush mountains and hills. The architecture was incredible. We drove over a bridge that looked just like the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and for a moment Ofer and I could almost imagine that we were home. Our faces were glued to the window, pointing at the intricately designed office buildings, hotels, at the massive amounts of cargo in the shipyard, at the bridge off in the distance. We knew we were in for a treat.

The bus dropped us off at the stop closest to our hotel. Once off the bus we realized that we had no idea where to go from there to find the hotel. Even though we have been traveling for some time now we are seeing that we need to get our act together and look at this stuff BEFORE we leave a place with internet. Ofer asked a few store clerks and one checked his Iphone and sent us in the direction of the right street (it was a start) but he had never heard of the hotel.

With backpacks weighing us down and luggage trailing behind we panted our way down the street. 20 minutes later the terrain changed and we didn’t seem to be in the best area of town. My expectations plummeted from there and I started having visions of moldy carpets and bugs in the bathroom. Then as if out of a mirage we saw our hotel. And it was great. Our room was beautiful, the hotel had a restaurant and bar and there was even a gym and outside pool, we were in heaven!

My cousin’s wife Vicky had grown up in Hong Kong and she and Evan had their wedding there so they were kind enough to forward us a list of things to do while we were in the area.

I have to start off by saying that I love Dim Sum. I could eat it every day, I really could. Meats and sweets stuffed inside doughy or flaky pastries...um ok, yes please. Hong Kong was the beginning of the Dim Sum month on our trip (you will see this theme continue through Aisa I promise). We went to a yummy Dim Sum Restaurant that was recommended to us and even there, on the first day in Hong Kong we talked about how much we were impressed by the city and how we could see that our friends and family who were/had lived here felt the same.

Ofer and I took a car up to The Peak; a lookout spot to see incredible views of the city. There we really got a better sense of how the city was laid out and how diverse the terrain is.

That night we went to a restaurant that Vicky’s Uncle owns called the Yellow Door. Once we sat down and started to order a man came over to us and asked us if we were the ones related to Vicky, it ended up being Vicky’s cousin. He is an amazing chef and photographer, both of which we can attest to. We sat and had a bottle of wine with him as we started our 6 course meal. He was so incredibly kind and asked us if we wanted to join he and his family the next day as they went to an area outside of the city for lunch by the water. We very excitedly agreed. We were eager to see non-touristy areas and to get some good tips from Hong Kong natives. By the way, the meal was sooo tasty. After being in Japan and having two very large pre-fixe meals we were starting to be concerned that our palates were too underdeveloped to enjoy exotic cuisine. But the food at the Yellow Door was delicious. Most of it was very different from anything we had tried before but it was so good that we were eager to see what each course would offer.

The next day we took a car out with him, his family and his parents (Vicky’s uncle). We went to a fishing town about 30 minutes outside the city of Hong Kong. We walked down the pier and saw numerous boats filled to the brim with fresh fish, clams, lobsters, oysters and squid.

They explained to us that the way it works is we look at what is fresh that day in the fishermen’s boats. You buy the seafood directly from them and then bring your sometimes still alive seafood to the restaurants that line the pier. You tell then how you want it cooked, and they cook your food as you wait. What a concept!!! We can easily say that was the freshest seafood we had ever had, and it was delicious. I guess one of the perks of having a chef in the family is that they know what to cook you and they know where to send you for great food.

Ofer’s friend Craig and his girlfriend Jane live in Hong Kong. Craig has been there for 6 years despite his initial plan of being there for a much shorter period of time (and we now understand why). We could definitely see getting addicted to life in Hong Kong.

Craig and Jane were incredibly hospitable. They took us to the most delicious Nepalese restaurant, to a Karaoke establishment, to his amazing apartment on something like the 20th floor, and they recommended bars, restaurants and day trips for us. It was so nice to be with a couple that really loved their lives; they both enjoy their work and really make the best of their time away from the office. They were both so fun easy to talk to that it all the more supported our idea of maybe someday taking 6 months to a year in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has a great nightlife. There is an area called SOHO that is covered in tasty little restaurants with almost every kind of international cuisine (except Mexican I think). When walking one night Ofer and I discovered one area that looked like it had a rave going in the street. There must have been at least 10 bars/clubs on this one street. Music blasted from each place and people didn’t even try to fit inside, instead they just stood in the streets with their friends and enjoyed a drink there.

As I mentioned before Hong Kong Island is covered with some pretty good sized hills. In order to make the area more user friendly someone brilliant came up with the idea of putting in an escalator scaling the hill and letting you off on each street with different restaurants, coffee shops, clubs and galleries. Whomever this guy was is what I call a ‘Neverlander’. Only a kid, or someone who is still a kid at heart and believes anything is possible would have presented to a board the idea of putting an escalator on the streets like that. Brilliant I tell you. Now if only someone will create a house with a spring boarded floor and padded walls with a slide leading down to the pool, then we will be on our way to thinking outside the box (my girlfriends know what I’m talking about).

One of the last things we did in Hong Kong was to take the gondola to Lantau to see the Giant Buddha. The gondola ride was about 30 minutes long and was so beautiful. I am working on my whole fear of heights thing so Ofer and I decided to get the glass bottomed gondola just to push me to the brink. I did pretty well with the glass bottom but there was no way for Ofer to get me to stand for a picture. This was even before we were told by Craig that at one time before the gondola had opened that a few had fallen. Information I am always happy to get after I have done it!

Once in Lantau we walked the 268 steps to see the Buddha. They were not kidding around, he is huge (112 feet tall to be exact). I really loved the statues surrounding the Buddha, they appeared so serene and loving. After chilling with the Buddha we visited the Monastery. There were locals and visitors lighting incense and saying prayers outside the doors. It really was quite a site.

Earlier that day when we had arrived at Lantau we went to see a video that they had about Buddha’s life. It really was beautifully done. I think both Ofer and I knew most of the things that the video was teaching but it was a good way to get us into the peaceful mood of the area. The most striking thing about the video was the exit. Sounds weird, but as you are leaving the walls are inscribed with quotes from Buddhist texts.

We spent about 30 minutes in that area reading each inscription. It is such a pure way to see the world. It is all about me, how I react, how I behave, how I choose to be in this world. Whenever Ofer and I spend some time reading some of these famous texts we always comment that we want to learn more. Hopefully when we are in Australia and have some down time we can take some Buddhist or Vedantic courses. This is another reason why I am so impressed with Ofer. He is so eager to keep learning, to expose himself to different cultures, traditions, teachings and to see what fits for him and how to incorporate different ways of thought and action into his daily experience. Growing up with parents who were very liberal in terms of learning and thought this has always been something that has intrigued and driven me. I am a lucky girl to have found a man who loves to do the same.

We ate in their restaurants, we drank in their bars (even broke a bottle in one), we swam in their pools, played squash on their courts, flew in gondolas in their skies and visited their ‘must see’ spots. But Ofer and I both felt like it wasn’t enough. This was the first place we had traveled to that when we left we wished we could have been there for at least another week. That is one of the greatest things about this trip. We are getting a sense of what areas we love, where we want to visit again and other places that we can just check off our list. As we were taking off in the airplane bound for Shanghai, China we looked to each other and fantasized for a minute wondering when we will be back to Hong Kong and where in our lives together will we be. We are excited to see!

The beginning of the trip was admittedly tough for me. I think I was homesick a week before we even left. Just knowing that I wouldn’t be seeing my friends and family, that I would be living out of a suitcase, that I wouldn’t have private time at home to decompress really did make me nervous. When I told most people about the trip they couldn’t contain their excitement about all of the positives, “You aren’t going to work for over a year!”, “You get to travel with fiance around the world!”. But the more I heard their excitement the more obvious it was to me how uneasy and scared I was.

The first month or so of the trip I wrestled with these feelings. The end of Hawaii and Israel were the toughest. I missed my friends and family, I felt so far away from anything familiar and comfortable and I kept reminding myself that I would feel this way for many many months to come.

Plus I couldn’t help but notice that absolutely everything in my life had turned on a dime. I had no job, no home, no loved ones (except Ofer of course) close by, no car, no private time. Not to mention that the first day of the trip was the day that Ofer and I got engaged. I was suddenly going to be someone’s wife, we are really going to get married, live together, commit ourselves to each other for the rest of our lives and someday in the not so distant future I was going to be someone’s mother! I had never in my life even lived with a boyfriend and now not only were we living together we were with each other 24 hours a day. No going to work and then sharing about our day when we got home. Nope. He knew all of the happenings throughout my day not to mention all the unmentionable ones.

Now if I step back, I promise I am more happy and excited than anyone about all of this. I am marring the man of my dreams, we are traveling the world together, we are planning a wedding and we are getting to know each other more than I ever could have imagined before we do so. However the people close to me know that nothing in my life is done without a lot of thought, a lot of talk and a lot of analysis ( as if you couldn’t tell from reading my blogs). If I were home and newly engaged I would be lunching with my girlfriends talking about what a huge step marriage is. About who I want to be in this marriage, about my dreams my excitement and also about my fears. We would process all of this. I like processing things. It made me feel like I have taken the time to try to understand each facet of what was happening so that I wouldn’t have a moment in my life when I would wake up and look around and think to myself, “when did all of this happen?”.

But somewhere in the world, maybe it was Nepal or maybe India, things changed. Ofer and I hit a travel groove. Suddenly things started to gel. I started to notice I could pack my suitcase in half the time. Ofer and I seemed to work out what items and tasks were whose responsibility. If we didn’t know exactly how to get to the hotel I would chill with the baggage until we figured it out. I brought tissues and earplugs for the flight and Ofer arranged the ride to the airport. Neither of a needed to control everything and both of us understood that we each needed to contribute in our own way to feel effective.

And what’s more, I really started to enjoy the process. Now, I like not knowing what the room is going to look like that we are going to sleep in next week. I am even OK with the fact that it well very may be a total disaster. No water from the shower or electricity, no problem...I have learned to take baths in the sink with candle light. No seat belts in the taxi, no problem...flying around in the back seat honestly doesn’t even phase me anymore. Pringles and Fanta for dinner....sound great it covers two of the most important food group: starch and radioactive orange.

This may seem easy to some of you. But to me it is very new. I am used to being in control. I love control (have I mentioned that). I like having notes in my bag of every detail for the trip so nothing goes wrong. I have the flight details, the hotel number and even a map showing the route there. And as much as I like that part of myself...my ability to organize, I have to admit it is liberating to learn to let it go. It feels like I have lifted a weight of responsibility that I was putting on myself; to be perfect, to make the world predictable, to live life through worrying.

Because for me at least, that is really what it is. It is smart to have certain details understood, especially when you are traveling in a foreign place but I obsessed over every little thing going smoothly and as predicted. But the thing that only I had access to, in my body, in my head was how exhausting that was. Constantly worrying, constantly playing the ‘Worst Case Scenario’ game in my head. But I started to notice that no matter if these self induced stresses went through my head or not things always seemed to work out. So in fact, the only person that the worrying was hurting was me. It was like I was living the trip in my own suffocating bubble. I could see and experience what was going on in my own way but I wasn’t allowing myself to access the richness and color, to allow things to be new and different and sometimes hard without making it a painful experience.

Isn’t that the most difficult task in life. To be in control of your own thoughts. To not let your environment determine how you experience the world. Whether in the best of times or the worst of times, I am the only one who creates my experience of them. I truly believe that the quality of our own life that we perceive is ONLY determined by our thoughts. Two people who go through the same traumatic event can see it through completely different lenses. The person who lets the trauma no matter how small be in control of them, in my opinion, ultimately is the one creating the trauma.

These are things that I hope to work on throughout my life. I am in control of my experience. Period. I am the only one that is living the world the way I have chosen to experience it. Period. My happiness, fear, success or failure is determined alone by the way I choose to experience the world.

There are many times that ‘Anxiety Shayna’ shows up. Sometimes she is at the airport rolling her eyes when Ofer forgets the flight number. Other times she is standing on the street dodging rickshaws and missing her old couch and remote control. This trip has been a test in so many ways. A test of how I choose to see my world and how I choose to respond. Even as I write this I struggle with with situations and worries. But more often that not, definitely more than ever in my life, ‘Chilled Out Shayna’ is stepping in. Laughing at the mistakes that we make and excited to see what comes next.

So much of this is a testament to Ofer. That man lives life as a Yogi (except without all the postures). He is able to be still. Challenges arise and he just notices them and moves ahead toward what he believes is right. He even admits that sometimes his own thoughts create the challenges and instead of reacting to them he just watches them like passing clouds without putting judgement on them.

And he is incredibly consistent; consistently loving, thoughtful, creative, positive and patient. Patient with himself and impressively patient with me. I think we are all so complex. Some of us let our complexities run like news tickers in our minds and other feed the lines straight out our mouths. I am the latter. I put it all out there with him. He knows everything; the good, the bad and sometimes the really really bad. But he is rarely shaken. Even as I continue to toss pebbles and throw stones in this waters he always returns to stillness. And this stillness is catching. The more I am around him, the more I truly want to learn from him how to be this way.

The way I felt on the first day of this trip is so far away from the way I feel now. Sitting in the airport, surrounded by a language that is not my own, with a 5 day old head cold, not knowing what is coming up for us next...I am better than good, I am great.

(Rates 0-5. 0 being it didn’t existed and 5 that it greatly exceeded our expectations)

Food: 3 Very fishy (it wasn’t for us...we ate a lot of McDonalds)
Accommodations: 4 We stayed in very nice hotels with restaurants, gyms and pools inside
Cleanliness of Streets: 5 Incredibly clean streets like Disney World
Courtesy of Service Staff: 5 Very kind, will bow and back away from you when done talking
Condition of Roads: 5 Very well taken care of, very few potholes.
Drivers: 5 Seemed honest and used a meter, there were seat belts and they obeyed traffic laws
Prices: 5 Taxis, food and hotels cost even more than they do in NY
Kindness of Locals: 4 Very nice if you engage with them but most keep to their own business
TV: 2 No English channels in most places if they even had a TV

Our Favorite City: Tokyo (busier and more modern than Kyoto which is what we like)
What to check when you first enter your hotel room: The toilet, cause it could be awesome!! If you were given two beds instead of 1 since we didn’t have the same last name.




No garbage on the streets

Tasty pastries (but some had fish so watch-out!)

Bullet train (Shinkasen), expensive but damn quick and comfortable

Bean paste pancake like desserts not for me but Ofer liked them

Watching TED on TV cause no channels in English

Very creative mens/women’s clothing and hairstyles in the downtown areas

Real Japanese Koi fish in the ponds

Poor English spelling everywhere (sanatarized, confort, Itarian)

Festival for ghosts where they burn a Japanese character into 4 mountains in Kyoto

Any local taking pictures always does a peace sign

Vertical advertisements on buildings instead of horizontal

Exoskeleton of bugs on the ground gave a nice surprise crunch when you’re walking

Walked through the Sony building and saw very futuristic looking cars

Traditional high-class food was next to inedible

You could buy ‘good-luck bracelets’ for just about anything; happy marriage, health, to do well on a test

It was painfully hot outside we felt like we were baking in an oven

Incredibly beautiful drive up the mountain to Hakone, it made me realize why people were so inspired to paint and looked just like a painting

Anime Museum was packed with kids and adults sitting around reading (cool concept)

Store owners washing the street outside their business every morning

No eating/drinking on the street

Wipe-out like TV shows with very excited and self destructive people

Taking a natural springs bath with naked locals in Hakone and following strict instructions on how to do so

Some women walking around in traditional clothing with wooden shoes and white faces

Fancy marble karaoke buildings

Little boys staring at us on the subway then yelling “Baseball!” to us as they left the train

People never jay-walk

The pagodas and temples were all incredibly well kept and respected by the locals and tourists

Almost every woman wore fake eyelashes

Most dishes tasted like fish (even potato chips)

Museum where you could watch artists make different pieces (porcelain, baskets, jewelry)

Everyone carried handkerchiefs to keep their faces dry

The zoo in Tokyo was amazing, we spent hours there

Had to stand in one place to eat even your ice cream cone on the street

We ate McDonalds 4 times

Cars drive on the opposite side of the road, drivers are in the passenger seat, side view mirrors are on the hood of the car

Stations on TV with very child-like dating shows with hearts all over the screen

Lots of women carried umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun, really pretty

Burning up at Universal Studios outside of Osaka but we loved the indoor roller coaster

Vending machines on every street with take out food, drinks and cigarettes

No cars honking

Very thin buildings in between larger ones

Advanced toilets with heater, sprays and sound effects

Markets with fruit, nuts, spices, dried and fresh fish

Very loud bugs in the trees that sounded like rain sticks

No trash cans on the streets

Knock-off branded wallets, watches, shoes, clothes etc

Fishy sushi, ew