JAPAN!

Classes have finally finished at HKUST and it has been a wild, but fun ride at the school. I completely finished two classes and have two finals towards the end of December. For my Chinese class, my teacher was very happy that she got to teach us Mandarin and how far we have all come since the beginning of the term. For my Embedded Systems, my partner and I finished our project and I think that it turned out nicely. Since everyone was done with classes and had late exams, we all decided to go to Japan to visit and explore before our finals actually started. Some of us are staying longer than others because of when exams are scheduled.

We got to Osaka really early in the morning because our flight got delayed by two hours, so we had to sleep in the airport until 8am. When we all woke up the airport was packed and we didn’t realize how much time went by. When we first arrived, everyone was really nice and helpful. When we needed directions to the bus station, a gentleman that worked there walked us all the way down to the bus stop, instead of just giving us directions. We were really shocked that he went out of his way to help us and that was just the start of the hospitality here in Japan. When we finally got to the Airbnb, we all fell asleep for the whole afternoon because we were all exhausted from the flight over and being up all morning the day after. When we woke up we went to explore some of Dōtonbori and to get dinner. The streets were packed with people and the smell of great food. We stopped by a ramen bar and it honestly was the best part of the night. I never had real ramen back home in America and I fell in love with it.

After dinner, we all searched for things to do the next day and found some fun things to do. When we woke up in the morning, we went to get lunch and had miso ramen near where we wanted to visit. We went to Osaka Caste and Park and stopped by Umeda to visit some of the sites. When we were walking in the park, it was nice to see the leaves a different colors, since in Hong Kong the leaves don’t change colors. When we go to Osaka Castle, the scenery was beautiful and it was very peaceful. After the Castle, we went to Umeda and rode the Ferris wheel that looked over the city. We then went to an all-you-can-eat Japanese BBQ restaurant and it was the best! The meat was delicious and the sides were phenomenal also. The start of being in Japan was great and we did a lot in one day and we have so much more to do for the rest of the coming days!