Scenes from Japan

Japan is the home of the vending machine...

The 'Golden Turd' - or Asahi Beer building in Tokyo

Our Kyoto ryokan room

Relaxing in the ryokan

Long Qing Ice Festival

About 60kms north west of Beijing lies the Long Qing gorge.
Steep cliffs, a dam and a lake.
In summer a place for boating, climbing and hiking.
In winter, Long Qing is home to an ice festival - Beijing's answer to Harbin - a bizarre display of large and small illuminated ice sculptures sitting at the bottom of the gorge in a massive tent.
See the Forbidden City in ice. See goldfish and assorted sea creatures trapped in an ice world.

Long Qing is also home to the largest dragon encased escalator in the the world (or maybe China; or Beijing; or north of Beijing?) - it is used to get to the top of the dam and to the lake. Coming down is a walk or for 20RMB you can do it on a toboggan.

Building across the street III

It's the one year anniversary of the start of construction of the building across the street and still the end is not in sight. They worked day and night starting last February. They ruined our sleep with the noise of cement mixers arriving throughout the night.

Then in July they stopped as part of the Olympic preparations - all building works across Beijng were halted and the skies cleared and noise disappeared.

They resumed after the October national holiday, but by now the persistent complaints of the neighbours had resulted in a ban on night-time work. We watched as every day the building grew taller. We speculated as to the final height. Originally we had been told 5 floors but when this was passed we were told 28! Now, in fact, it looks like a dozen or so..but who knows.

What will it be? Who will move in? No-one seems to know for sure. Building in Beijing is shrouded in mystery and speculation. What we do know - for sure - is that our view from the 12th floor is seriously impaired - the line of site to the mountains, on a clear day, is now obstructed by Beijing's rising skyline.