Blogger Labels: Dragon Boat Festival,SHANGHAI,CHINA,Yuyuan,Garden,tradition,tourists,zongzi
Sunday, June 6, 2010
SHANGHAI, CHINA: Yummy zongzi
Blogger Labels: Dragon Boat Festival,SHANGHAI,CHINA,Yuyuan,Garden,tradition,tourists,zongzi
TRAVEL: How To Get Along With Your Travel Partner
A vacation can be relaxing, exciting, and fun, unless you and your travel partner spend the entire time arguing about where to go and what to do.
You Will Need
- Agenda
- Budget
- Ability to compromise
- Breaks
- Sense of humor
- Overnight trip (optional)
Step 1: Understand differences
Understand that different people like to experience traveling in different ways. One person may prefer to have a meticulously detailed schedule while another may prefer to wing it.
Test the waters by going away for only one night on your first trip with a travel partner.
Step 2: Plan an agenda
Make an agenda, itemizing what each of you wants to see or do on the trip.
Be open to any situations that arise on the trip that may be more fun or interesting than what is outlined in the itinerary.
Step 3: Budget the trip
Set up a budget for the trip that clearly outlines how much the trip is going to cost. Specify every expense and determine how much each person is responsible for.
Step 4: Compromise
Be willing to compromise. Compromise means that sometimes both parties have to give up a little of something they want to make each other happy.
Step 5: Take a break
Take a break from each other. If you have travel plans that conflict, or one of you wants to stay in the hotel, split off and meet back together later.
Step 6: Work together
Work off each other’s strengths and weaknesses. If your partner is better at planning, and you are better at taking pictures, then do what you are good at.
Step 7: Laugh
Have a sense of humor. It is often easier to get along when you and your partner can share a laugh about your travel experiences.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, in 2008, international tourism generated $944 billion.
JAPAN: Tokyo: It's All About the Food
Jun 6, 2010, 10:58 AM
Bizarre Foods Blog Posted by: Andrew Zimmern
What a great and interesting trip this was. Notice the story selection here...Sumo, Akihabara, Japanese Nutty Professor, exotic alternative lifestyles like La Carmina and her posse or our day with the Cos-play girls...No food stories here! Well this show was originally shot as an episode of Bizarre World, and the week we returned from the shoot we found out that we were going to be going back to making only Bizarre Foods episodes so this show is kind of a rare breed. A hybrid episode that I think is a great show. I wish you could have seen the original program in all its glory. For example, the theme restaurant act was not originally about the restaurants, it was about the people that I dined with. Cross dressing, fetish party going, club crazy, hipster chic and phenomenally great company, La Carmina and her friends adore Tokyo because it's the world's trend setting capital, a city where you can be whatever you want. Despite, or in spite of, its rep for being straight laced and narrow minded, Tokyo is a city that makes everyone comfortable, and there is no kink too exotic, no lifestyle too extreme. Tokyo accepts' anyone and any way of life. Who knew? But that's one of the things I love most about Tokyo.
But of course it's all about the food for me...Nobu, Mizutani, Ishikawa, Quintessence, Hamadaya, Kanda, Koju, Sukiyabashi Jiro and about 100 tempura shops, yakitori bars, sukiayaki houses, shabu shabu dens and chankonabe taverns are what make the Tokyo food scene for me. BUT, and it's a big but, I come home every night from a busy 17 hour shoot day and I don't have the energy to do anything. Since I always stay at the same hotel in Shibuya I simply walk one block to Tokyo Food Show, a super sized food shop that lie beneath Shibuya Station. Many Japanese department stores offer an entire floor dedicated to food. Often located in basements, these markets are colloquially named depachika, taken from combining department store (depaato) and basement (chika). TFS is two city blocks in size, with plenty of treats for everyone in your family to choose from. TFS is the market I stop in every day when I am in Tokyo. I always stay in Shibuya, and TFS is in Shibuya Crossing, and unlike many markets in Asia, the Tokyo Food Show is laid out like the makeup floor at Saks Fifth Avenue in NYC; very easy to navigate. The place is filled with locals, all shopping on the way home or grabbing a bite for lunch or dinner. The staff is helpful and getting lost in TFS is the best advice I can give you. It's a blast. The Japanese work ethic is hardcore, and many businessmen and women slave away well into the evening. The market caters to men and women on the go, serving up bento boxes and takeaway noodle dishes of every type of Japanese cookery. And I mean everything. If it can be eaten in Japan, it can be found at TFS in both the raw and cooked formats. Typically, eating local fare is the best route taken at markets. However, the Tokyo Food Show also offers a wide variety of exotic gourmet foods from around the globe. Check out the Belgian beer stalls, Vietnamese spring roll stands, French fromageries, and even stellar Indian curry shops. As a culture, the Japanese earn a reputation for envelope-pushing, often times serving up wacky experimentation when it comes to food. Expect to see square melons priced at $200 and single, perfect mangoes from teeny farms halfway across the world selling for 50 bucks apiece. Looking for 80 types of seaweed salad to squeeze in between a cluster of sweet French wine grapes and a piece of miso glazed wild salmon from Hokkaido? This is the place. Last month I bought Okinawan sea salt, dried natural shiso leaves for crumbling over rice, a pound of mixed pickles for the hotel fridge, small baskets of smoked shishamo (a teeny fish), several bottles of aged shoyu, chili-spiked salted cod roe, teeny skewers of roasted eel, ripe honey-sweet persimmons and gobs of chu-toro sashimi for eating on the walk back to the hotel. You're shopping in a basement, but don't expect bargains. But they are there. Some rice cracker stands are for art lovers with baskets of their wares costing a small fortune, but there are 40 other rice cracker vendors selling at reasonable prices. For a deal, hit up the market around closing time when vendors sell off items at a deep discount (especially the oyster shuckers and other seafood purveyors) and be sure to cruise through the massive supermarket located at the West end of the market.
Looking for a taste of Tokyo...head to TFS. You will love it.
CHINA & THE KOREAS: US call to China on N Korea
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has challenged China to deal with North Korean provocation and the longer-term issue of whether Beijing's military can establish more durable links with the US.
Asian nations cannot stand by in the face of North Korea's alleged sinking of a South Korean warship, Mr Gates said yesterday during an international security summit that was dominated by questions about Pyongyang.
"To do nothing would set the wrong precedent," he said.
The latest crisis with North Korea has highlighted the limited options to deter from attacks or dismantle its nuclear weapons program. The US and China are part of a diplomatic effort to buy out the North's nuclear program.
Mr Gates said North Korea seemed immune to many of the levers of international pressure, such as ostracism.
"How do you gain purchase with a regime that doesn't seem to care what happens to it?" he said in an interview with the BBC.
"As long as the regime doesn't care what the outside world thinks of it, as long as it doesn't care about the wellbeing of its people, there's not a lot you can do about it, to be quite frank, unless you're willing at some point to use military force. And nobody wants to do that."
China, the North's closest ally, has yet to lay blame for the explosion that sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors. China is the communist North's biggest patron, giving it economic and political pull over Pyongyang. Washington and Seoul want China to use its clout to rein in the North Koreans.
South Korea referred the sinking of its warship to the UN Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions. China is one of five veto-holding members of the council.
At the summit, Mr Gates said: "The nations of this region share the task of addressing these dangerous provocations."
He asked China to resume the military co-operation with the US that Beijing suspended after the Obama administration went ahead with the sale of weapons to Taiwan worth more than $US6 billion ($7.2bn). The two powers cannot afford to misunderstand one another, Mr Gates told the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore.
Mr Gates joined South Korea in trying to raise world support for the conclusion that North Korea was to blame for the sinking of the South's warship, and should be held to account.
South Korean officials handed out pamphlets containing the results of an international investigation that found North Korea blew the warship Cheonan apart with a torpedo.
Mr Gates met South Korean officials several times over two days, including a three-way discussion with officials from South Korea and Japan. Washington is pledged to defend both nations as a legacy of US wars in the Pacific. Mr Gates said the three nations "have to have a united front to deter further provocation".
AP
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