Pilgrimage to Kameishiro for Clannad After Story
The majority of the settings in Kyoto Animation series Clannad (クラナド), including second season Clannad After Story, are based on locations in Tokyo. In After Story Episode 18, Tomoyo takes Ushio on a trip to Aomori Prefecture, but the ryokan where they stay is modeled on Kameishirō (亀石楼) in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture. With the evening...
Pilgrimage to Shanghai for Shikioriori
Shikioriori (詩季織々)—Flavors of Youth in English-speaking markets and Si shi qing chun (肆式青春) in Chinese—is an anthology of three short films co-produced by CoMix Wave Films (CWF) in Tokyo, Japan and Haoliners Animation League in Shanghai, China. Each short film has a different director and features a different location in China. Haoliners founder and CEO...
Xianxia Lu
Xianxia Lu (仙霞路) is the main commercial and arterial road through Shanghai’s Japanese expatriate area in Changning District. The community is not so dense nor its boundaries concrete enough to call it an enclave, it’s more a center of gravity for Japanese and some Korean residents in the city. Mei and I went for an...
Lujiazui
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve 2016, Mei and I headed across the Huangpu River to Lujiazui (陆家嘴) in search of a Christmas market held at one of the large hotels there. Lujiazui is Shanghai’s modern financial and business district, directly facing the historic one across the river. It’s also the base of all the...
Fuzhou Lu
On a brisk but sunny day in 2016 December, Mei and I had a list of objectives for our afternoon walk: new books for her, a visit to the Waitan, and some camera tests. This brought us to Fuzhou Lu (福州路). Though this street is in what was once the British concession, an area which...
Beijing Dong Lu
Mei and I have visited the Shanghai Yinxiang Cheng a few times, the closest thing we have to the electronics and instrument vendors of Akihabara Electric Town. We almost always eventually find what we need, though we usually have to hunt for some time. That’s part of the fun. Occasionally a vendor will tell us...
Minhang Development Zone and Xinzhuang
About a year prior to the time of writing, my daughter Mei and I began making mini expeditions to parts of Shanghai we hadn’t seen before. Though we moved here at the end of 2014, between adjusting to a new place, new people, new school, new sibling, etc., it took a while before we’d felt...
Hongkou Zhabei Walk
This past October during China’s “golden week”, the mandated national holiday that annually floods every tourist site several times over capacity and brings transit arteries to a crashing halt, my family and I did what we usually do, stay close to home and enjoy the quiet. When we want to go out, we look for...
Sichuan Bei Lu Jiedao
On this particular trip, I made a short walk around a neighborhood in Hongkou District (虹口区) while out on an errand. The route goes from Ha'erbin Lu through Hailun Lu and Siping Lu returning to the metro Hailun Road Station. The area appears to be in Sichuan Bei Lu Jiedao (四川北路街道), along the border with...
Ippudo Beijing Opening Day
Before today, there was no ramen in Beijing worth eating. (My deskmate in Mandarin class is from Kansai and will back me up on this.) While this is far from Ippudo’s first foray into Mainland China—multiple shops in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and even one in Shenzhen have been well-received—Beijing finally gets in the game with its...
A Day Lived in Jinhua
Jinhua (金华) is a prefecture-level city in China’s Zhejiang Province. It counts population of 5.4 million in its administrative division, putting it roughly on par with the Atlanta metro area. In China scale however, it would generally be considered a third-tier city, with the second consisting of cities like larger, wealthier neighbor Hangzhou (pop. 8.7...
Intercity Rail in China
I’ve been following general political and business developments in China for the past three years, and specifically looking at public transit infrastructure for about the last 18 months. I would be exaggerating if I said I had gained more than a superficial outsider’s understanding of either. At the moment, I still rely on English language...
