Posted on January 17th, 2009 by aj
I managed a 7 hour layover in Beijing, so all I managed to see was the forbidden city. Tienanmen Square is a huge empty expanse of flat stones. Mao used to stand a million people in there just to have a chuckle at being leader of all China. Its surrounded by soviet inspired architecture and [...]
Posted on January 17th, 2009 by aj
Geoff and I took the train into Shanghai for the weekend. In between Chinese cities the landscape alternated between abandoned communes, and freshly stamped out planned communities. Five hundred units of the exact same house arranged in maddening tessellation. The families I saw on the streets and in restaurants were odd inverted pyramids of attention. [...]
Posted on January 17th, 2009 by aj
I went to China for work a couple months ago. It was my second time in China and I got to visit much more central urban places. My workplace was in Hangzhou, a small city of six million people built around an enormous lake. It felt like walking around a city of one million in [...]
Posted on February 1st, 2004 by aj
Tokyo is very spread out with four or five downtowns. Buildings ripple with animated neon and humongous video advertisements. Twisty weird architectural creations jump out and vie for your attention as you pass them on the train, but there’s rarely enough in one place for a skyline. In parts of O Daiba you can’t see [...]
Posted on January 20th, 2004 by aj
We went to Yokohama to visit an old high school friend of my mother’s, Kazuko Yamamoto. Our bus arrived in Shinjuku station, early in the morning and Kazuko was very worried about us encountering a homeless person there. A homeless person. One. Coming from the USA and recently from Indochina this was quite a perspective [...]