Tuesday, 31 July 2007

Hikawa Jinga Near My House

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Notice the cicadas in the background and the chime at the end which is my town's own little 6pm alarm clock. Every town has a different tune.

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Labels: home movies, japan

Getting in Shape

Friends will know that I've become a Yoga freak since last December and became such an advocate of it that I decided to quit my hyper expensive gym membership as it was actually keeping my muscles toned and even helping me develop more defined muscles in places I hadn't even thought about (get your mind out of the gutter!).

Recently though I've been trying to add even more weight loss to my routine and came across this cool calorie counter which was pretty easy to use and very effective way to count your calories.

What I loved on that site though is the cool page they have that lets you calculate how much calories burned through different exercises. It took me 5 seconds to see how much I burn each morning with my 60 minutes of Yoga (something I'd never really thought to look up before) and really got me thinking about what I eat for breakfast.

Pretty cool!

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Labels: fitness, internet

Sunday, 29 July 2007

Australia, Cambodia and Okinawa, oh my!

While the Obon holidays will be pretty boring with me having next to no money (thank YOU city tax and health insurance!) my end of year holidays will be packed!

As of now I'll be staying in Tokyo for another "should be white but won't be" Christmas then off to Australia for my sister's wedding in Orange on New Years Eve, then after New Years up to Cambodia to help Koky with his orphanage/ school project and then working once more in Tokyo until about June 2008 when I will hopefully move down south the the beautiful Okinawa!

That's the plan anyway.

Tokyo's grown on me but I just don't want to spend a 5th year here. It's not a terrible city but well, recently in the news there was a woman who had defected from North Korea and after a few years in Tokyo decided to return to North Korea.

Kind of says it all really.

And now enjoy this great Jpop song: Feed and Email Readers Click Here

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Labels: Australia, Cambodia, christmas, japan, new year, Okinawa

Book hotels in Hong Kong through Asiahotels.com

Readers of this blog will know that I've been planning to go to Hong Kong for a while but due to the cost of living in Tokyo as well as the insane working schedule and lack of "take your holidays whener you want" system like back home after almost three and a half years I still havn't made my way over there.

About two years ago I bought myself the latest version of the Lonely Planet Hong Kong guide but the country has changed so much recently that I don't think I'll be using it at all when I do go.

Thankfully I found an amazingly cool site, DiscoverHongKong.com! I simply love the fact that you can choose "English" on the front page and your location! Being an Australian living in Japan I hate, hate, hate it when sites automatically detect I'm surfing the net from Japan and give me the Japanese language version of a site by default (I'm looking at you Microsoft and Hotmail!!!).

With DiscoverHongKong.com I chose "English" and then my location in Asia. Pure and simple but oh, so appreciated!

The site is so well designed it's inspired me to once again get on with this site's redesign. It covers all aspects of Hong Kong; The city, shopping, dining, heritage and the often forgotten natural wonders that a lot of tourists don't even think to check out on their trips.

Another cool site I've come across is AsiaHotels.com which offers flights to pretty much everywhere (not just Asia). Their site is so easy to navigate with all the countries listed in the left side menu. So many travel sites seem to hide their flights through numerous subpages which makes comparing prices and times a chore but here, navigation is clean and easy and above all else... FAST!

AsiaHotels.com has a nice page on Hong Kong (as they do for all locations) which features fast info on the city, hotels and most importantly the weather and tipping! (I always find it funny how with all the major struggles with cultural difference, tipping always seems to come up. I still try to force-tip people in Tokyo).

I want to go to Hong Kong all over again! Now all I need is some money (just paid off a years worth of Japanese National Health Insurance, the bastards!) and some more holidays when the rest of Japan isn't on break.

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Labels: Hong Kong