Goodbye China, Hello Kitty!

The following is an e-mail I sent to family and friends during my April 2004 trip to China and Japan:

Kon-nichiwa!

And hello from the future, where today is tomorrow, and yesterday was.. uh.. hmm... well anyway, greetings from the far east, so far east in fact... it's west!

I'm writing to you from Japan - The Land of the Rising Sanrio. It's been a strange, crazy, dizzying first week or so. I started my trip in Hong Kong, SAR - or Hong Kong, SARS - as they like to joke. I met up with 2 girls from Hong Kong, Tess and Emily, whom I met while traveling in Finland a few years back. They proceeded to show me all the sights and completely stuff me with food. I don't normally eat a lot of meat or Chinese food, so it didn't take much to make me full. It was hilarious because I am as big as Tess and her boyfriend Terrance put together, and yet they ate 3 times as much as I did. They couldn't understand how little I ate. Mind you, I was eating huge plates of noodles, meat, assorted fried foods, soup, and desserts. For 3 meals. Forget about Pearl Cream, I want to know how the Chinese can eat so much and stay so thin.

One afternoon I went with Emily and her boyfriend Sunny to see the Biggest Buddha in the World. (I will be able to confirm this after today, because here in Nara, Japan they also claim to have the biggest Buddha in the World. Perhaps I should suggest regionalizing the title, like The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.  See - no controversy there - you know exactly what you're getting.  But I digress...) So after we ate a lunch as big as the Buddha itself, we got on a bus that took us from the top of the hill back down to the bottom of the island.  A high speed, curvy, swervy, bus ride. Basically, imagine eating at a China Buffet, and then immediately following, riding a rollercoaster. For 45 minutes. I thought I was going to puke, but somehow I managed to hold it together. Thank God - we finally got off the bus. Except the ferry boat to Hong Kong was leaving that second, and we had to SPRINT to catch it. So now imagine eating a China Buffet, riding a rollercoaster, and then running the 220. As we were running I could actually feel my lunch coming up and I had to stop a few times and double over to hold the food back in, and then keep running. It wasn't quite a movie moment where we had to jump over the water and land on the boat as it was taking off, but it was darn close. Thank God - we were finally on the boat. Except now the boat is rocking and swaying. You get the idea.

Seriously, the food was delicious and I had an amazing time in HK and mainland China. It was frustrating, chaotic, confusing, crazy, exhausting, beautiful, charming, warm, friendly, and exciting. And that was just day one. As for the bathrooms, well, let's just say I know where they got the title "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

I'd love to write more but my time is almost up.  I'm in Japan for about a week before finishing up in Beijing.  I don:t know if I'll get a chance to send another update, so for now, it's Sayonara!!

Much Love,
Tootsie