tofu panda strikes again

last weekend (sept 13th) i was able to complete a long-standing goal of mine, to free climb the chief. i did this with my climbing partner kurt. the route was the ultimate everything a 20 pitch monster climb all the way from the bottom to the top of the chief in squamish (aka squampton), british columbia.

the route was about 700 meters of free climbing, and amazing. the day was long, and the weather was beautiful. it took us 14 hours to climb the pitch and 2 hours to descend. it was an amazing experience and i look forward to some more climbing.

next week i leave for yosemite, california to go climbing for about 2 weeks.

the pictures!
- the route we climbed (in red)
-view from pitch 15
-me flaking some rope before the next pitch
-on top of the summit tired and dark
-view from the top

of course we had a few pints at the end of the trip!

xi'an 3 (the warriors)

visiting the terra cotta warriors were great! it is definitely worth seeing them. the trip over to the museum was a bit interesting, and i have to say that i was surprised that so many people wanted to scam us (more than any other city combined so far), but i would defitinately consider this a wonder of the world and a world heritage site.

the pics!
1) an intro to the tombs
2)clay horses to protect the emperor on his way into the afterlife
3) horses with cart
4)a picture of lotting
5) the hole where people got in to loot the site (i thought it was very interesting)







the movies!

this is of a xi'an soldier


xi'an warrior with horse


xi'an warriors part 1


xi'an warriors part 2 (different angle)

xi'an 2

don't worry, the warriors will be coming shorty. i only took video so they are all being uploaded at the moment on youtube.

another amazing site that we saw was the largest muslim temple in china. if you do not know, the northwest region of china is all muslim. many of them also live in xi'an. what is so interesting about this is that fact that these muslim chinese have guns and they do not want to be associated with china. to my knowledge at least this has not been reported on the news.

although i am not goind to ad a photo i did lear something interesting about the temple. it is believed that china only had 4 sundials, and one of them was in this muslim temple.

the pictures!
1) under the gate to the temple looking north (i always love how these temple face cardinal directions)
2)a pagoda in the mosque (i like the grass growing on the top. as a side note: there is an interesting term in chinese. you can say that a person is like grass on a wall, they are always changing in the wind, or as g dub would say a flip flopper.)
3)view of where the monks pray
4)chris petting a kitty cat (all the temples we went to had nice healthy cats. the monks always feed them)





here is a video from the entrance gate to the mosque

xi'an 1

so, i know it has been a while since i have put anything up on this blog, but i am having a rest day right now in seoul, south korea. i decided to add some of my pictures during the last few weeks. i most want to let the pictures speak for themselves.

when i last wrote in the blog we were in cheng du. from there we (mom, chris, ya ge, and myself) took a plan over to xi'an. xi'an used to be the capital city of china for over one thousand years. there are so many dead people in tombs here it is shocking. everybody has one! the government has said that there will be no more excavations of tombs because there are just too many and the technology (and i assume resources) are not available to preserve all the material once they have been removed from the dirt.

unfortunately i do not have any pictures on my camera of this taoist temple we went to. it was great because they had a vegan restaurant inside and the food was quite welcoming to me. here are the pics!

1) this amazing 7 story temple built by a monk (i will get the name later)
2)a view from the top (showing a water festival below)
3)us at the water festival! this was quite impressive. it was basically a water display for about 20 minutes to clasical western and chinese music
4)the buddhas feet within the temple (if you can see the detail in the picture you will notice how intrucate the carving is.) you can also get a copy of these feet where the ink it up and then copy it to a piece of paper.
5)the gate at xi'an during the evening. along the gate is a moat, and every night we would walk along it. most of the time it was a dog park

thats it for these pictures, i will be adding more which shows the warriors soon

chengdu

sorry for the fact that there has been no new entries but i have been quite busy! i think we have done almost everything there is to do in chengdu. for the record, i need to make this very clear that i am officially bored of pandas. they were so lame. but, as it turns out, my new love is for the red pandas! i know you may think that they dont exist, but they do! they are much cuter, and not as slovenly as their cousins.

chengdu is a beautiful city, and has lots of parks. there are more trees in this city that any of the other cities i have seen combined! i dont think we had to many crazy adventures here. the food was good and very spicy. the specialy is hot pot. i have enjoyed that a lot since it is my favorite chinese food.

what we did in chengdu: 1) saw the pandas 2) went to this massive shopping area 3) saw the remains of the Jin Sha (gold sand) people, which was amazing, 4) went to Du Fu park which is dedicated to Du Fu, one of the most famous poets in china, 5) went to a taoist temple (one of the oldest in china, which is old) and ate a great vegetarian meal there, 6) went and saw my old pal Guan Yu, aka Lord Guan, the most bad ass character from 'the romance of the 3 kingdoms', 7) saw a chengdu face changing opera. take a look here http://youtube.com/watch?v=0ncVYa3ox7I, and 8) saw other smaller stuff about chengdu.

i am now in xi'an and we are going to see the warriors and the tombs. this should be quite interesting. what i enjoy most about this place is that there is a large chinese muslim place. i personally like the food a lot, i will make sure to get some pictures. the adventure yesterday was that we went to this muslim snack street, but we could not get out! we spent 2 hours walking around this maze of muslim food shops! if we go back i will make sure to get some more pictures.

i dont have the time right now to add more pictures, but i will make sure to do so soon.

1) red panda in action
2) big pappa lord guan!
3) i cant remember who these people are!
4) me at the taoist temple

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where we left off...

So, to keep everyone interested i have decided to add some pictures from my last trip, which i was too lazy to do last year.

so the plan: arrive in bj, head out to sichuan provence to the capital chengdu. there we will see the pandas. from there we will go to shanxi provence and go to xi'an (she-on). in xi'an we will look at the terracotta warriors. after that we will go back to beijing. my mom and chris (friend since 7th grade!) will go back home to seattle. after that my friend cherry will come up, for a few days to beijng. after that i will go to seoul, south korea to see my brother, party a few days, then head back to beijing.

that's about it!

pictures;
1) a huge peach in the city, te size of your head!
2) one of my favorite areas i go allllll the time. this is the royal observatory.
3) mom and i entering the forbidden city
4) a foggy great wall of china
5) a very interesting map of china

okayama

it is now time to leave japan.　living in okayama for a few days was wonderful. it was a nice country city of a million people. not much traffic, people stopped at the lights, and generally everyone was quite nice.

now i am getting ready to leave for the airport and start another trip back to beijing to meet my mother and brother. below are some of my favorite pictures on this last trip.

riding on the shinkansen. we covered half of japan in 3 hours!

a last nite party. hey nik! i had a coopers for you at an aussie bar.

the library was a blast. this photo is of the technical readout, and energy used to run the library. it was quite amazing.

me posing with my badge. it reads "friendly person" so i can take pictures.

a photo of the english section (note the library science area). the library had a small but well-rounded collection of english books. you can get a little bit of everything. i believe there are 100 english speaking people in the city. oh, and there are no library fines too.

sorry for the wrong angle, but it is only 105usd to buy 6 peaches, and they were grown inside!

okayama castle. it was in amazing condition.

the next 2 pictures are of the gardens before the castle. i believe it is where the ruling person could go hang out. it was nice, i had a good local beer there.

okayama shrine. yoshie and i got blessed by the monks in this building. it is a hybrid of shintoism and buddhism. the ritual was super intense. we were the only people in the building while they were praying for us (they prayed for me to geta good job, i hope so!)

as you know i hate cats, but i thought it would be nice to get a picture. it was so cute, the cat (mie-chan) would sleep with me at nite!

thats it for now. off to beijing!

osaka

so, i just ｌｅｆｔ　ｏｓａｋａ，　ａｎｄ　ｉ　ａｍ　ｎｏｗ　ｉｎ　ｏｋａｙａｍａ　ｗｈｉｃｈ　ｉｓ　ｗｅｓｔ　ｏｆ　ｏｓａｋａ．　ｉｔ　ｉｓ　ａ　ｓｍａｌｌ　ｃｉｔｙ　ａｎｄ　ｈａｓ　ｏｎｌｙ　１ｍｉｌｌｉｏｎ　ｐｅｅｐｓ．ｏｓａｋａ　ｗａｓ　ｍｕｃｈ　ｍｏｒｅ　ｆｕｎ　ｔｈａｎ　ｔｏｋｙo. the people liked to party more, and were very friendly. we meet with some friends, and just partied all over the town. as you can see my face is a little red from the sun.

i think that is about it. in okayama it is going to be pretty relaxing. i think tomororw i am going to go to the kirin brewery. i also hope to have time to see the hello kitty! play which looks interesting, and hopefully go see a baseball game!

so, here is a listing of the pics;

me, tomo, and ochibi (means small)

group picture of us at the second restaurant

downtown osaka!

the thinnest phone in the world! i want to so bad, and it is cheap here!

1gig micro sd from the phone. craziness

takoyami - a super good food. it is a fried pastry ball with veggies, squid, and fish

that is all for now. i hope to get some country pics up this week before i leave for beijing. when i get back wayne and mom will visit. after that the plan is to head up to mongolia to visit kyles brother jess. from there i will head off to tibet.

i forgot to mention! when i got to the house the whole family was there to meet me. it was lots of fun. it was interesting to have 10 people in one part of the house trying to speak english to me, and me trying to speak japanese. i will get a picture of their fat cat soon.

kyoto

hey there, i just got to osaka. the last two days we were in kyoto. the city was wonderful! it has been the best place so far. people are nice, food speciality is tofu, and there is lots to do!

the first day we saw some local shrines and simply walked around the area.

the pictues:
some weird guy with birds, i have no idea, but they were having a good time just laying on him and relaxing.

good lunch

playing with the taiko drums! it is a really fun game

the small streets of kyoto at nite

kiyomizu-tera temple. this was wonderful. no nails were used in building this. i went to a similar one in shanxi province of china.

yasaka jinja (shrine). it was nice

the river the splits downtown kyoto. same place as the duck guy.

kinkanji temple. this is a world heritage site. it is plated all in gold. you will see many pictures of this temple during the seasons on postcards (yes, sorry i have not sent any out yet!)

that is it for now. just lots of walking. tonite is a big party, maybe even some real japanese karaoke, box style!