The weather had cooled down nicely, relatively speaking, so Jen and I, along with another conference goer, headed over to the Mong Kok markets. The streets were awash with people and filled with artificial daylight from an impressive amount of signage. After a brief stop in a badminton shop for some badminton supplies for our friend, we dove into the thick of it.

The second conference of the trip, the Psycholinguistic Representation of Tone, was not, unfortunately, nearby our hotel. It was being held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the New Territories, about 50 minutes away by train. We had thought to perhaps take the taxi through the tunnel from Hong Kong island to the Kowloon side to minimize the number of transfers.

I soon met up with my fellow SFU congress attendees, and we wandered off towards our dim sum destination, the East Ocean Victoria City Restaurant. Much like last night, we simply marked down the number we wanted of a particular item. There were three pages of choices, and there were a plethora of options for everybody, including a few more unusual choices, such as pig’s blood and chicken feet. Everything I sampled, mind you I was fairly tame in my selections, was delicious—baked BBQ pork buns (super tasty!), shrimp dumplings, deep fried eggplant, etc. And the food kept coming!

My plan was to head up to the Peak, which apparently affords a 360-degree view of the city. I hopped on the MTR and whisked my way over one stop to Admiralty Station. I was slightly turned around as to exactly which direction I needed to go to find the Peak, but I tried heading through one of the malls, Pacific Place, which naturally got me side-tracked.

The plan for the afternoon was to head over to Macau, an island formerly belonging to Portugal but which was handed back to China in 1999. It’s also only 65 km away from Hong Kong, making it a relatively easy day trip for us. Our first task was getting a subway pass, known as the Octopus card here. Thankfully, our hotel is only a couple blocks from an MTR station, so we headed over and picked up a couple Octopi.

I awoke after a decent night’s sleep and worked on my presentation notes/speech for a couple hours in the morning, making a brief breakfast run to the convenience store downstairs. I headed over to the Congress for the morning sessions, sitting in on a few second language talks and a tone perception talk. A slight touch of nerves for my impending presentation led me to have a rather abbreviated lunch break–a quick egg salad/avocado sandwich at Deli France near the convention centre.

I left fairly early in search of food in the general direction of the Hong Kong Convention Centre. The wave of humidity that hit me as I exited the hotel instantly brought me back to my time in Thailand. The heat was definitely present, though not unbearable, but I think it’s ultimately the smell that reminds me of it–something like thick hair mingling with car exhaust fumes, noodles and stir fry with a bit of standing water thrown in. In my wanderings, it became apparent how small I was amidst the soaring buildings–caverns of concrete, steel and glass.

I’d never flown Air China before, but I was immediately pleased to see a pillow/blanket set on my seat and a TV set in the seat back. I’d almost forgotten the kind of amenities one gets when flying international. We were soon on our way, and I settled in for the long haul. Fortunately, I was able to sleep a good portion of the journey, broken up by the occasional meal (another perk of flying international, they feed you!).

It was with great excitement and anticipation that I awoke this morning, only to have it dashed rather soggily as I discovered it was raining rather excessively. Festival fail. Unfortunately, this meant that the festival was pretty much canceled. It seems odd to me that for something like the third biggest festival in Japan, they wouldn’t have some sort of wet-weather plan, particularly when it occurs annually in October.

It was 12:30 pm by the time we reached Takayama, and what would be my final stop on my whirlwind Japanese tour. J-Hoppers Hostel was quite easy to find, just a 3 minute walk from the station. I was too early to check-in, so I left my luggage and headed off for ‘Old Town’. I’d been to Takayama before, but I had always enjoyed the traditional merchant houses (dating back to the Edo period, 1600s), with shops selling artisan pottery and wood carvings, as well as, of course, the ubiquitous sarubobo doll.

My plan for the day was really to hit the highlights of Kanazawa. After answering a barrage of emails regarding my recruitment for my thesis follow-up study I’m running when I get back to Vancouver, I headed out the door. I went back to the station to grab my bus pass for the day and hopped on the Loop bus bound for Kenrokuen. The town is fairly compact (it only takes about 40 minutes to do the entire loop), so I was soon off the bus and up the steps to the gardens.

It wasn’t long before I was rolling into Kanazawa. I disembarked and got my bearings, heading off to find my guest house. While I was proud at having found it so easily, tucked away as it is, I was soon crestfallen upon discovering it was closed for cleaning from 12 – 3 pm, which meant I was stuck with my luggage for the next 2 hours. I’d known that they wanted you out in the afternoon to clean (most hostels do), but I suppose I didn’t anticipate them to be closed and locked completely.