After walking along the Path of Philosophy in the morning I took a bus to what turned out to be my favourite part of Kyoto that I visited during my trip. Daitoku-ji (大徳寺) is a temple complex which contains more than twenty sub-temples and some of the finest examples of Zen architecture and design in Japan, including gardens and tea ceremony rooms.
Undoubtedly one of, if not the, hardest things about living in a foreign country is dealing with the language barrier. Unless you’re a natural linguist then life suddenly becomes a blur of indistinguishable sounds which can be quite disorienting at first. In the past I’ve equated this with going deaf but this is a poor analogy since tone and volume can also be valuable indicators of what someone is trying to express.
On my second day in Kyoto thick clouds hung in the air as I made my way to the north-west outskirts of the city to explore the districts of Arashiyama (嵐山) and Sagano. After a fifteen minute journey on the Sagano Line from Nijō Station (near the hostel I was staying at) I arrived and made my way through the quiet streets to my first destination…
Last weekend Shenzhen opened its first Fringe festival centered around Coastal City in Nanshan (where I live) loosely based on the original from Edinburgh. Two weeks of events are planned and proceedings kicked off with a colourful parade with various community groups taking part along Shenzhen Bay Avenue.
It’s been a while since I wrote anything about life in Shenzhen so I thought I’d provide a quick update of what’s been going on the past few weeks. One of the most notable experiences was when an earthquake measuring 2.8 on the Richter scale hit Shenzhen on Friday 19th Nov at 2:42 pm (Beijing time).
A friend of mine, Cai Qing, was recently in Chaoyang Park (Beijing) when she noticed a group was holding open auditions for a part in an upcoming Chinese movie. She’s not an actress by profession but thought it would be fun so recorded a couple of short introductory casting videos and went on her way. For most people the story would end here but things took an intriguing twist…
Last week I took an impromptu but much-needed holiday to South Korea. While I hadn’t expected to return to Korea this year the time and price were right so I decided to go for it and took a midnight flight from Hong Kong to Seoul arriving 5am in driving rain. Not the best start perhaps but from there on in things went decidedly uphill…
If you’ve lived abroad long enough you’ve undoubtedly encountered other foreigners who are also there either by choice (like myself) or because they’ve been sent there by their employer. In my experience a lot of them tend to fall into 1 of 2 categories – those who go out of their way to integrate with the local culture and those who band together and try to recreate a feeling of “home” while constantly moaning about how much it isn’t.
Continuing my series of quirky videos about Japanese culture here’s a beautifully executed infographic introduction to the country created from a foreigners point of view (by Kenichi Tanaka, a Japanese designer):
I’ve long been fascinated by the density of housing which can be found in many parts of Asia, and in particular Hong Kong where high-rise living has been taken to the extremes of both human and technological limits. I find it remarkable how people are able to adapt to their particular circumstances, be they due to space or resource constrains, and still retain their sanity (mostly).