香港I Love Hong Kong 香港

I went to Hong Kong to visit my friends on my break! Hong Kong could be my favorite place in the world. It reminds me of Osaka and Istanbul mixed. I was surprised to find that I could read the kanji for Hong Kong: 香港. They use those kanji in Japanese, too. The 香 is from my friend Kaori's name. It is a pleasant meaning for "scent" or "smell" The 港 means "harbour" or "bay". So together, Hong Kong means something like, "pleasantly scented harbour" which is sort of ironic and funny. Go down to the harbour in Hong Kong and tell me if it's pleasant.
They should rename Hong Kong 美味 饎 国. (I don't write in Chinese) Hong Kong food is the best in the world. I know I say that about every place I visit, but that's because I really can't /don't eat a whole lot in mainland Japan and so when I travel, I get to excited about delicious food. Congee breakfasts are amazing. The huge selection of vegetable s and fruit is amazing. The variety available in a single restaurant is amazing. You could eat every day for two months in Hong Kong and not only never eat at the same restaurant, but also never eat the same dish twice. And I'm vegetarian. Imagine how much more variety and selection would be available if I ate meat. There's a great vegetarian restaurant in Jordan, by the way.Salted quail eggs from the night market in Yau Ma Tei in Kowloon.
I was trying so hard not to have a sad or disgusted look on my face that I actually made a face that looked excited and stoked. Keep in mind that I wasn't. But this is a cow's tail. Durian is maybe my favorite fruit. I hardly ever get to eat it because it's a tropical fruit and only stays in season for a while. It's spiky and as big as three people's heads. That's why I hardly ever get to try it. I am one of the only people I know who loves it, and I can't eat an entire durian alone. It smells and tastes like French cheese to me. It has a texture of Brie or Camembert and a lot of people think fruit shouldn't taste and feel like that. My friends say it smells like cat pee but I love it.
My friend tries to shove an entire red bean cake into his mouth at once. This greedy picture made us laugh for ages.

I love markets!
Kira, I already know what you're going to say about these dolls. Ha.
Best neon sign.
Central Hong Kong at night becomes a street party filled with wealthy-looking foreign people.
If any of you guys have lived in both Hong Kong and Tokyo, I'd be really interested to hear what you think about the foreign community. For me, it was a total culture shock walking through the rich, downtown party street in Central and seeing almost all foreign people but having it feel the exact opposite of Roppongi. Almost everyone in HK speaks a lot of English, too. I want to know what other people think about it, but I think that the impact of colonialism is what the difference is.

My favorite place in HK is Tsim Sha Tsui. I stayed at the Chungking Mansions, the place where Wong Kar Wai's Chungking Express was filmed. It was a little bit scary but surprisingly clean and obviously cheap. It felt like the whole world was living inside that place and everyone wanted something from you. I talked to some ladies from India and Ghana. There were British people and Afghani people and mainland Chinese people. It looked and smelled like Tanzania and it made me nostalgic. Hong Kong's multiculturalism made me feel like Japan is really missing something. What do you think?