This place is polluted beyond belief. I am talking eye-burning, throat-scorching, respiratory-arresting, orange-brown-yellow hands after you hold a handrail. They call it Asian Dust also known as yellow dust. They say it is a seasonal meteorological phenomenon that affects east Asia during the springtime months. It originates in the deserts of Mongolia and northern China where winds kick up dense clouds of fine, dry soil particles. It has become a serious p...

Our family, mostly the kids (my husband is a big hit too), have easily posed for 30 pictures with the Chinese tourists from the countryside visiting Beijing. We only assume that is where they are from- we are really not sure. We have been gawked at everywhere we go. The bold ones run up and either ask or just start taking action on obtaining a photo with us. What an interesting opportunity to feel what it is like to be a celebrity. At first it was a little...

Tokyo is the largest city in the world at 33,200,000. Just like the bamboo in Kyoto, the tulips in Holland, the glaciers in New Zealand, the chocolate department in Harrods…something about vast volume of anyone thing hits you over the head. This is this way with Tokyo- its massiveness is a site to see. The subway map alone boggles the mind. It was not a love affair with Japan for me when I first arrived. It snuck up on me unaware. The 1960's cigaret...

I went to the Louvre, walked right into Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres' painting The Turkish Bath and spent some time as a cherubic-bodied nude in the Japanese baths (onsens) in Hakone. Public naked bathing. Check. We leave life on the tatami mat (bamboo matted on-the-floor living) at our ryokan (traditional Japanese guest house) and return to waist high living on beds, chairs and couches in Kyoto. Kyoto is a couple of hours south by Shinkansen bul...

Last night we travelled from Hong Kong to Japan. The Hong Kong MTR is so smart..there is a place right in town where you can check your bags for all the major airlines. This means you can easily take the MTR from the center of town to the airport without lugging a ton of bags on and off platforms. When bag-lugging is out the equation it is a no brainer to take public transport. It was a 4-hour Cathay flight. I already wrote about the hour after we landed. ...