We spent the night at a cafe/hotel in a pretty remote part of Wakayama. The owner is definitely a motorcycle enthusiast, and there are several other references to American culture. (And Irish, because of the beer.)

Back to the road.

We stopped to see an interesting rock-based landmark.

It really reminds me of digital art representations of water-based planets in science fiction. Very cool. As we were trying to photograph the rocks, we saw tons and tons of fish in the bay. Flocking behaviour...

This was not where you'd expect to find fish, just some shallow water with rocks against the shore. Pretty, but barren.

We explored a bit and found out that there is an aquarium nearby. It was open, although this is winter, and it had a glass-bottomed boat that goes into the harbor and shows you the fish! Perfect. I had a bit of trouble fitting into the boat but all's well. It's a great view.

I had no idea, but this area is basically subtropical, with coral reefs and tons of fish.

We even had a special surprise!

Back to shore. Someone was excited.

There is lots of dried coral on the beach. Fortunately, the coral in the water seemed pretty intact. I was worried since I know lots of coral is dying worldwide due to rising temperatures.

We had an amazing lunch,

and a long drive with lots of tolls (about $60!!)...

back to Kyoto.

In Kyoto, we saw the headquarters of Nintendo, with a beautiful rainbow that crossed 180 degrees of the sky. I lined it up to look like Nintendo is the pot of gold.

Yes, the sky really was that color.

After some food shenanigans in which we waited about 75 minutes for food that wasn't coming, we got on the Shinkansen back to Tokyo. This is the day with the most traveling. Until next time.

Seoul itself is quite hilly, and it has a large variety of buildings. They look very small to western eyes, with short stories, much like Tokyo. But some are built to a larger scale, like Chinese cities.

I spent some time clothes shopping in the Gangnam district, which is pretty famous for this. I found mostly expensive international luxury brands, and then a bunch of shops selling very cheap stuff (usually 10,000-20,000 won, or $10-$20). Goto mall is a giant long corridor of small stalls.

I also went to Namdaemun, which is similar but colder since it's outside... and also has food.

Speaking of food, I went to Itaewon to a vegan restaurant called The Plant Cafe & Kitchen. I listed all my dietary restrictions and they managed to make something for me. It was great. I went twice.

It's in a very hilly district though!

I'm told that Itaewon has a lot of international people, because it's where a US army base is. A lot of people speak English there, and a lot of young people live there as well. It's also where the War Memorial of Korea is, which I visited my second time in the area.

It's amazing to think that North Korea is so close and that the war has never really ended. I spent some time speaking with a young man who spent time in the army (mandatory service) and got some interesting perspectives. The North is a lot more capable than we sometimes think in the west. All North IP addresses are blocked in the South, for fear of hacks, but they still happen.

Standing here, the cold war feels very close. The future of the world could go any way, and Korea has to be flexible to adapt to it. I felt a sense of optimism but also a great weight of history.

The memorial has many soldiers' names. Many Americans. I can see how that bond was forged. Although, the US did kinda invade Korea once, a while ago...

The memorial has a great circular timeline with western and eastern (Chinese) history overlaid.

And lots of paraphernalia.

As I was leaving,

a young Korean woman started talking to me in decent English. I wasn't sure why at first, but I think she just wanted to practice talking. We actually had a great conversation while waiting for transportation. I'll have to try Tteokguk sometime. I was kind of surprised that she was so nice because in general, Koreans seem to not mind swearing at each other or pushing their way through a crowd. But I guess there has to be something to balance this out!

Goodbye, South Korea. I hope I return sometime.

The first thing I noticed about Seoul was the air quality. After landing at the airport (GMP regional airport via Tokyo), I could smell air pollution within the building. Outside, as I caught a late bus at 11pm local time, there was a thick forest-fire/industrial quality to the air and I tried to breathe through my shirt. I managed to catch a taxi from the bus terminus to my fancy on-campus hotel; here are some views from the hotel on different days.

From my own experience, it seems that Seoul has some very bad days where I absolutely needed to wear a mask (not quite as bad as Shanghai, but close), mixed with a greater portion of days where the air is perfectly fine. Bad air can be rated 80-150 quality on aqicn.org, but the worst day was only 80 -- I guess I was smelling smoke particles larger than 2.5 microns. I watched a video about a Canadian living in Seoul and Tokyo, and the author said she got sick every month in Seoul vs quite rarely in Tokyo, blaming the air quality. I agree that Tokyo doesn't get as bad. Some in Seoul blame China and yellow dust for the pollution, but Korea also has some heavy industry & some very smelly buildings and roads, so I guess the pollution controls aren't very strict.

Anyway, that's enough about the air. It's good enough that I would consider living here, but it would be constantly on my mind.

The SNU campus is built on a mountainside, so it's very hilly. I mapped out flat routes across campus so I could get around. Here's campus, with a bird of course.

The buildings are new and there are so many of them. This is a massive university, with lots of funding. They seem to have a lot of very specialized departments. This is the lab I'm here to visit.

I can read a tiny bit of Hangul, the Korean alphabet, but I make heavy use of google translate to obtain food I can eat. My host also helps me find food. I can't eat fermented food at the moment and, as he said, "this is a BAD time for you to visit Korea". Let's just say I had a lot of bread and bibimbap.

Here's something from a museum on campus!

One day after a lot of chatting, I had a spare afternoon, so I went hiking on the mountain. There's a trail to the peak, apparently you can join it halfway through from campus but I just went to the beginning. I started late, at around 4pm. There are two peaks, and I chose the lower one (~450m elevation). It's winter here.

It's funny because this mountain has obviously been inhabited for a long time. There are all kinds of huts, wood piles, cobblestone pathways, lights, etc crisscrossing the mountainside. It feels quite old world.

I ran into some cats

and a waterwheel

and, later on, I was surprised by a pair of dogs. I saw their heads poking over the trail ahead of me, waiting; I waited too. Eventually they decided to make a large arc around me, then rejoin the trail lower down and carry on. There were no people around. To all appearances, these were two wild (formerly domesticated) dogs perfectly content to use the pathway, and stick very close to each other. They trotted practically ear to ear. It was really quite something.

It got dark quite quickly but I was determined to make it to the top.

And then I made it!

I counted steps on the way down. At about 800, I had to use my phone as a flashlight. Sometime later I reached the lower paved part of the trail, where there were streetlights, stopped to eat some bread, and went home.

At one transfer though, a older woman asked me in English if I was going to Nikko, handing me a map. Then all the signs and announcements were in Japanese, English, and Chinese (hadn't been hearing Chinese announcements before), and I knew that Nikko must be a bit of a tourist attraction...

I guess the "World Heritage Site!" sign was another hint. It's a pretty beautiful location though, with mountains rising sharply in the near distance.

I went to see a small temple. It was quite nice, with wish-boards hanging in the breeze. Sometimes people would come and bow their heads for a moment, then pull the cord so the gourd would rattle, I imagine to get the attention of the spirits.

I wandered a bit further and found a park etc.

I'm very casual about the little girl on her bicycle and the brother waving around a net, but in reality I waited for quite a while for them to walk somewhere good for a picture :)

Hiking

Here's the bit you've been waiting for. I went to get a bus pass to Lake Chuzenji and a local informed me that traffic was so bad, the bus was taking 2 hours instead of 40 minutes. Everyone wanted to see the autumn colours; this was the best weekend for it. He recommended I go to Kirifuri instead, 10 minutes away, where there was a nice waterfall.

My hand hovered over the two buttons for buying tickets. I couldn't decide. I eventually chose Kirifuri more or less randomly, but it made the guy quite happy :)

And I think it was a good choice! There were lines and lines of people waiting to go to Chuzenji, but Kirifuri was pretty empty by comparison.

And oh my, the colours were amazing. I'm just going to put a lot of trees pictures here now.

It's even better when you can see other hills.

It's only a very short walk to see the first two waterfalls.

OK, fine, have some selfies.

After this, I went on a longer walk (about 8km round trip). It felt a bit like an enchanted forest.
(This is the gloomy part where our hero might make a poor decision to increase tension. Onwards! Narrator's note: both sunset and the last bus were at about 5pm...)

Then an old road with some bridges... The mountains rise very quickly. I think it's because they are all volcanic in origin.
I was going to delete that last picture but it has a certain pleasing vertigo to it.

Oh dear. No phone signal, no Google translate. Wild boars live that way. The plot thickens.

Up one hill and down another, many switchbacks later, I crossed another bridge and then I found it!

Sunset pictures

On my return, the darkness approached
and the sky started to make itself known.
I dashed over to the best spot to photograph a sunset!

Over to the moon.

OK, that's way too many pictures. I made it back to all the buses and trains. Ready for another day.

I'd had trouble the night before finding food... this place served salads though.
Everything is confusing, the way doors work, the way some shops just blend into the next; most menus aren't in English. Thank goodness for google photo translation (you point your phone camera at something and it translates the text it sees).

I went to explore Akihabara. My airbnb is only a block away!

Quickly lost in shops selling all kinds of things, comics and magic cards of course (in Japanese)

and switches and LEDs and so many electronics parts

I found, but did not purchase, 1.0 farad supercapacitors

There are computer shops, some of which are good deals, some of which aren't really (like this Alienware outlet).

But you gotta love the SSD wall!!

And servers, and RAM, and keyboards, and used laptops, and everything...

OK, I may have spent too much time looking at all the computer stuff. I did find a few other kinds of places though. I also found some nicer food this time (seaweed udon guarded by dalek)

and SUPER AMAZING vegetarian eggplant curry (went on the train just for this)

There was a huge "book tower" too with nine floors, but sadly not much English

I'm not entirely behind the times, there were a number of series that I have seen, even some subway ads...

More trains.

That's it for today. Planning to go on a hike tomorrow, if I can find some portable food!

I was preparing to leave Shanghai. My roommate took me to an extremely hidden food place and I had sesame-sesame-soup balls that were pretty tasty.

The air pollution didn't seem that bad really, but I was wearing a mask most of the time. I went to the airport. (Even though this was a regional airport, there was some western influence:)

Once we took off, it was easy to see that it was still pretty smoggy. I'd classify this as a good day for Shanghai:

You can see here the sameness of groups of buildings that seems to happen in Shanghai. I guess they were all built at the same time probably by the state. I saw a power plant through the fog, it looked more like a nuclear plant than coal, which is a good sign I guess.

As we circled away from the city, visibility improved.

Just off the coast there were a huge number of ships. There was a line of tankers marked by buoys. Some were waiting for time in the harbour, I think. It was insane. At the point this picture was taken, I counted more than 40 large ships, container ships/cargo ships.

I've seen ships off the coast of San Francisco before, but nothing like this. It gave me a sense of the scale of Shanghai's economy. Craziness.

Japan

As we approached Japan, I had a great view of the coastline. I was impressed by the volcanoes (image enhanced)
and even more impressed with Mount Fuji, which is massive!
Just as we were circling around for a landing, the sun began to set over the horizon, and I had a perfect moment of Fuji with the sun setting. There are some pictures, and a video, but they don't really do this justice.

I landed. Managed to get my SIM card working despite lack of sleep (had to select 3G-only before my phone let me change the APN settings. what?). Ate an apple strudel. Got on a train to the city. I'd landed at the Haneda regional airport, intentionally, so that the travel was easy.

The Japanese train had all kinds of gadgets and places to store things and shaped seats. A lot of things here are like that. The bathrooms are complicated, the water fountains can practically be configured for the exact temperature you want, etc. More later. That's it for now.

Only 93 on aqicn, but still smoggy. I donned a mask. I think I'm pretty sensitive to air pollution; even a lot of westerners I meet don't care as much.

I was switching hotels. Managed to figure out how the subway worked. One guy directed me to the entrance, just pointing, not expecting even a nod of thanks as if it was too much effort... The ticket machine rejected my bills and, when I got them split into coins, rejected some of the coins too! But eventually I got it to accept 3 RMB. The woman breaking my five smiled, amused, when I thanked her with "xièxiè". She's not the only one to do this. Perhaps my accent is really bad.

There's an x-ray scanner at every subway station. Every bag goes through the scanner. They're pretty serious about this.

Here we go, out of the subway:

The Oriental Pearl Tower is right here actually:

That upper walkway is really beautiful to look down from. It's also busy, and no one likes using the stairs in this city.

I dropped my bags at the super-fancy hotel and went to a shopping mall with ten floors...
I don't even know what's going on some of the time.
Darth Vader meets Battlestar Galactica? OK, here is Chinese fashion in a nutshell:

Everybody has little ears or eyes or yellow blob beings on all their stuff. I mean, I kind of already knew that, but it's really true...

Onto the subway, across the river, to the Bund I go. A little distracted first by some nice little shops
and what does this guy think he is doing (I saw 2 people do this today!)
What if he lit it and just forgot??

This other guy came up to me and said he wanted to practice his English. He knew a lot about Canada so I thought he was legit. We had some tea & edamame (which he said was invented by the Chinese) and when we left he had "conveniently" forgotten his wallet. Sigh. So I bought an old man a snack while he asked me about my travels. He must have been a polyglot though. Very good at several languages.

The Bund itself is somewhat policed
and busy
but has a fantastic view

A little bit of sibling rivalry

Am I in New York? No, because this is the Bund Bull... haha. No really. Same artist.

I wandered. I found a street which was closed to cars. Full of bicycles and especially little mopeds instead. No wonder there's so much pollution with all those single stroke engines...
Also, it keeps a lot of people employed I guess...

This dog-walker had some unruly dogs that got tangled up. She simply lifted one of the smaller ones by the leash over the others. It didn't seem to mind. I think this is a frequent occurrence.

I love the streets here. This is a much less wealthy neighbourhood by now. Still really lively.

Some shops sell very specific things. There was a lace shop. Here's a button shop.

This is such a fun place to photograph. Colours everywhere... pollution too...

OK, I'm entering a more clearly touristy area.
With more crazy shops.

Lots of little food places.

There's some kind of drink that looks like it has dry ice in it. Pretty weird.

Some crazy white guy is playing an electric violin with a nice amp and his parents are filming it and they're walking around like this. Why? I don't know. Bit of a crowd though.

It's pretty.
BTW, I found a cat.
Also a flying creature.

OK, heading back now. Here is what the subway is like. It's so crowded. There are wide pathways and they're always filled...

Good night, Shanghai.

I arrived in Shanghai several minutes after the last high-speed monorail of the day. Instead of 1.5 hours, it would now take 3 hours to get to my destination. So I decided to take a taxi; someone actually offered me a ride and I was extremely suspicious of this (in New York this would be asking for trouble). Didn't seem to get that continuing to reassure me that he was official may not actually convince me of this fact! But he was associated with an actual shuttle company.

The Pudong airport, by the way, is massive. One huge building that stretches sideways for all the security/baggage/checkpoint needs. A fair amount of pollution visible from the air. I felt like I was landing into a Blade Runner universe.

My taxi ran into another car. Of course. We both pulled over and there was a cop car right there (I think the first car had braked because he saw the cop). The two drivers were discussing this quite politely for at least ten minutes before the cop bothered to figure out what was going on. Photos were taken. Felt very third-world.

The roads are strangely large and uniform. Also there are traffic cameras mounted to all the overhead structures, every 100 metres or so, that are constantly flashing. Every car is having its license plate photo taken literally several times a kilometer. Yay big data. So that was weird.

But I made it. Cool view from floor 38. Time for sleep.

It wasn't as nice as Buda Castle though, so I went back there to explore in the sunshine. Found some cheeky graffiti on the way

and here I am climbing that hill again

There were some ceremonies going on, I think October 22nd is the anniversary of the 1956 revolution.

In that last pic you can see lighted torches as a large crowd walks through the city, trailed by police cars.

Inside the Buda castle/museum I find some royal signets of surprisingly large size

some Latin texts, a little too cursive to read easily

and a peaceful chapel. It's funny to think that such a small space served for many generations of kings, and that the bones of saints were taken here. Goes to show how difficult it is to construct buildings out of stone.

The best part was the ancient cellar from the very early days

with an obligatory tower where some relative was locked up for life:

Kinda cool statue of a goose thief.

A window out into the world.

Really cool guestbook.

Outside again,

This is Mace Tower... don't ask.

I always get the picture with the bird in it, ha ha.

Evening is coming on.

If it looks like I'm about to be run over in that last picture, don't worry, there were at least three seconds to spare. That's it for Budapest!

I flew into Budapest. Here are pictures from yesterday. This is the Bazilika.

I met a nice gentleman from central Africa by way of France, and we swapped camera tips.

Outside, it was raining, but I still wandered...

I climbed up to Buda Castle, which was very nice, but I have very few pictures due to the rain. In the evening the rain stopped, and I got some really nice shots along the river.

This is Buda Castle from afar:

And this is my favourite building somehow:

But this picture is the winner for the day.

More coming soon.

with plenty of things to take pictures of

and I thought this one was kind of funny

I went to the original Kensington market -- I love Calgary's neighbourhood of the same name so this automatically left a positive impression --

I met with a friend from the hostel and we found some Canada day celebrations (yes, it was July 1st!)

Oh, and doesn't this look like a Minecraft sky?

We went to the art gallery

which was cool

and I now know how the trams work. Hint: confusingly.

The hostel had a beautiful view of downtown and the fireworks (didn't bring my good camera though)

Some of this was spread out over the next day too, since I had an evening flight. I met another friend for lunch and rented a bike, flying along College St and Bay up to Bloor (where there was a bookstore...). It was sunny, and no one honked at me or tried to run me over (hullo Amsterdam), and it was fantastic.

My luggage was delivered to me right as I was going to leave. Yay.

I left myself (I thought) enough time for my flight, but everything went wrong (starting with, your reservation doesn't seem to exist, I think computers just don't like your name. Sorry.). So later I was standing in the security line which was moving incredibly slowly, and I could see I was going to miss my plane. I waited until fifteen minutes before departure then I asked the person in front of me, do you mind if I go ahead, and then the next person and the next etc (yay Canadians!). With some assistance I saw the next available security officer, who asked exactly one question -- "So what are studying?" -- and I ran to the gate. It was still boarding. In my rush I had miscalculated my remaining time, and I had an additional five or six minutes.

So I made my flight, and I absolutely needed to skip the line to do so, but I spent most of the flight feeling guilty about those five minutes (since I had told everyone my flight was in 15). Even though the outcome would have been the same if I had gone through that process five minutes later. Sigh. The guilt. I'm Canadian too, you see.

They did waive my checked baggage fee though! Because they didn't have change. (Well, really because they wanted a coffee break, but sshhh.)

As we began our descent, the sun began setting in an absurdly perfect red.

It was a sailor's dream. And when we landed:

It felt like a good ending for my trip. And hello, New York City...

finis

Thanks for reading about my travels, I hope they were entertaining! When I got home, I watched the Bourne Identity again, and now I recognize many (in Paris, most) of the filming locations. What more can you ask for?

I really enjoyed writing, and I may continue a blog on other topics. Let me know if you would be interested in reading that. Until the next time.

~~ dwk.

There was a connection through Iceland -- I had to dash to catch the plane, one of the last five people to board -- amusingly, after all this, I just have two Icelandic stamps to show for it in my passport. Then the extended flight over the Atlantic. I had a long conversation with the old woman next to me, who had emigrated to Ontario from Italy in her youth without speaking English or French. I told her many stories too and thus we passed the time.

At some point there were crazy ice floes outside the window, so I got my camera out, but mostly missed them (these are all chunks of ice in the open ocean)

I did catch some other beautiful shots of northern Canada though:

At one point we passed right on top of another plane, heading for Ottawa I think. You can see discrete exhaust cycles from the engines:

We landed, and I waited for my luggage before realizing it was definitely still stuck in Iceland. So I filled out forms and stepped outside. Even though I had been awake for about 24 hours straight at this point, I still stopped to watch the sunset:

Unfortunately, my SIM card with Canadian data capabilities was in my luggage. But I figured out how to get to my hostel, and fell soundly asleep, 26.5 hours after waking in Paris that morning.

While I was sleeping...

There was a shooting literally right outside my hostel's door at 5am. I slept through it because I was so tired, but when I got up at 7:30am there were cops outside and the door was cordoned off -- I heard one detective saying, "there's blood here, and there's blood there," and I looked outside and I could see it for myself. Three people were shot and two of them died soon after, in what appeared to be gang violence.

I'm not going to show pictures of that -- this is a travel blog OK? -- but here is what appeared the day after:

There was a police car stationed there 24/7, but no one made a move to erase this.

Strangely, I still feel safer about Toronto than I do about American cities like New York. The total number of crimes like this is much lower and everyone seemed to take it seriously here. I spoke to one of the cops for a while. There's still a sense of community, of general good will that seems to be missing e.g. when I see law enforcement in the States.

Anyway. I took three maple seeds and threw them into the wind from the top floor, watching them float away. Rest in peace.

In Barcelona, it's a balmy 23-24 degrees Celsius. This means I get sunburned pretty quickly because it's cool enough that I don't notice the sun. I step outside my hostel, pretty disoriented since I arrived by taxi, and find a nearby park.

The park

The Spanish have their own Arc de Triomphe for some reason

which is the beginning of the park

There is a castle

and iguanas

There are people blowing bubbles so I take pictures through those for a while. It's really hard to focus on a bubble in motion.

This park is so full of different colours, it's incredible.

and a combo

plus a lot of trees with yellow blossoms

OK, enough flower pictures. Some larger ones:

Elsewhere

Thoroughly sunburned, but not yet realizing it, I went to relax in this bar/restaurant called Story (couldn't resist), then outside where dangerous creatures lurk

but I hide in the grass with the yellow petals, and I'm safe

near the ships

In that last one you can see Christopher Columbus. Cool harbor bro.

I figured out how the metro station worked and found a skateboard park and actual mandarins GROWING IN FRONT OF ME

and other things.

Had lunch at a heavenly pasta place with wifi which directed me to..

La Pedrera (La Casa Milà)

Gaudí is Barcelona's most famous architect. This is one of his works:

It's designed to follow patterns in nature such as waves and bone superstructure. Nice lighting effects too, it looks like it's sunny even when it's not

Somewhat strange decorations on top

with spiral staircases that curve up and to the left -- I guess Gaudi wanted to break with medieval tradition here [most people right handed => defender wants right side with the most space as retreating upwards].

I really don't envy the brick laying guy's job here

although the inside does feel very organic.

The closest thing I can compare it to is the set of the Farscape TV show (which features an organic ship called the Leviathan). Very cool hexagonal floor tiles

which were shamelessly copied in the metro station outside, haha

I can't imagine the expense of living in a place like this though, let alone building it. The suites are huge. They probably cost like ten million dollars each. Let's just say, the entry fee for students to view it was 16,50 euro.

The Fountain!

At 9:30pm on certain days of the week, this famous fountain goes live. I met an Indian couple on the train and directed them to it, although I was fuzzy on exactly what the fountain would do... lights, water, music.

Getting there, the sun is setting, so I take absurd pictures

(those are reflections btw). I'm early, but so is everyone else

so we're all watching some street dancers

It's crazy how many people come, I have no way of counting but I would guess perhaps three thousand

There is trumpeting and the fountains gradually turn on. (There are small ones that some people had been sitting on without realizing there would be water coming out of them. Haha, oops.) I took many hundreds of pictures, but here are a few for your enjoyment

There were normal sprays and also very diffuse ones, which looked almost like aurora borealis as they moved in slow motion. There were other lights and fountains too. The Spanish sure know how to put on a good show.

Those laser-like lights are still, unlike lights from a club or from a blitz. Their very steadiness makes them seem peaceful. This fountain was my favourite.. here I am playing with flash and shutter effects

Even higher up the mountain, there is this

and a Roman living the dream. Fire starboard turbolasers!!!

OK, I congratulate you if you read this far, and here is one last picture -- the main fountain on time-lapse with about 1/5 shutter speed.

I took a couple's picture because their camera battery had died. I'm writing this here to remind myself. I can't believe I took so many pictures. What was I thinking?

Good night.