I realized that I left out way too many pics of the amazing food we had in Shanghai… here are a few more pics of the grub we noshed on out East.

Another Shanghai classic, mini peeled shrimp. Unlike in the States, the smaller the better since it is thought to have less flavor the bigger they get.

Clay pot of sweet soy sauce baked fatty pork and cuttlefish. May sound funny, but this dish with two bowls of rice is about my perfect meal.

Cold dishes at the start of a meal, crisp fatty pork cubes and salted duck, a small plate of dried sweet and sour plums, tofu slices with various toppings in soy sauce.

Chinky version of honey glazed ham, with little buns to turn them into the most amazing ham sandwich on earth

Dates stuffed with gluttinous rice

Chicken cubes fried with garlic and lots of red peppers

Egg white custard tarts with super flaky crusts, Macau style

Pork chop sandwhich. This thing costs less than a buck. The bread is firm,warm,crispy and chewy and the pork chop is flash fried and just a little spicy. I’ll take one of these over Quiznos any ole day of the week

Made by hand on the street, a box of chewy sweet peanutty goodness. This box cost about $0.80

sniff sniff.. it is a sad sad day indeed… today the first of many copies of my resume were sent out… somewhere now in the internet ether the seeds of my end are being planted… it’s going to be a rude rude awakening the first time I hear my alarm clock go off… but all good things must come to an end and this year has been one hell of a good thing… I am more than a little sad to see it end.. but I would have been a hell of a lot more sad if I had never done it… anyone out there thinking about being totally irresponsible and fiscally unsound for a long period of time.. stop thinking about it and just do it.. you don’t need much money and  the experience will be worth a thousand times what it costs… the wife just got the expansion pack to World of Warcraft.. so I haven’t talked to her in a while.. she just sits there and quests all night…but eventually even she will have to go back to work… oyyy

and CONGRATS!!! to maid4life and Vin Diesel… your wedding was awesome and I hope you have a blast on your honeymoon….

After a week and a half with my parents in Shanghai.. we needed a break… luckily we had planned to go to Japan to visit my college buddy who is stationed in Japan on board the USS Kitty Hawk… we landed in Narita and hopped on the slow train out to Yokosuka.. it was nice to get back to Japan again.. we were there in July and loved our time in Kyoto and were looking forward to spending some time in Tokyo this time…Japanese people truly are some of the friendliest on the planet and the service industry there is by far the best in the world.. from the cab drivers to people in KFC… they do their jobs better than anyone in the world… but first a couple of days lounging with Dr Toothy and his Navy buddies….right off the bat we figured we were going to be hitting the bottle harder than we had been all year… we wound up packing in a year’s worth of boozing into five days.. and for some reason.. they decided that they like tequilla again..nasty.. I haven’t touched the stuff since freshman year… and I can attest.. Navy folks can get down with the best of them….

Some random pics:

$210.00 USD for a freaking melon, granted it was a really pricey sweets shop in Ginza

Yep.. a Godzilla monument in Tokyo

The freshest sushi you will ever eat, we lucked out and got seated by the oldest chef behind the bar.. this guy was clearly the sensei because this sushi was unreal… forget Nobu and Sugiyama.. this place would wipe the floor with them

We bucked this line for sushi at 10am at the Tsjuki Fish market, we waited for a little over an hour and it was worth every minute of the wait.. the sushi at this place melted in your mouth

Dr T trying to ice skate in Yokohama                    Hot corn soup from a vending machine

The wife at the Ferrarri Bar in Yokosuka… we got messed up in that place…twice

Dr T and Yooks upstairs at Ferrari bar apres skating.. a bartender who parties like no one I have ever seen.. she called Dr T at 9am.. still out and tried to make plans for 11:30am!!!!.. Lunchtime for most people is still a night out for her…she is also 10 ft tall

On the deck of the CV-63 USS Kitty Hawk, unfortunately the flight wing was gone so there were no jets on board… but it was still fascinating to see the inside of this floating city… it is cramped in that thing

Me and Lt SG Toothy, watching him get saluted everywhere was giggling fuel for the Mrs

Crazy crosswalk in Shibuya, Tokyo

Ice Bar Tokyo, those parkas are really warm.. but they made Lars look like the Abominable Snowman.. the man is a giant, how he shares that tiny room with Dr T is a mystery

Dinner at the restaurant that inspired the finale of Kill Bill Vol 1

Dr T and us at Muse, crazy meat market filled with Gaijin trying to “connect” with the locals

Me and Fish Face at the fish market

Dr T and the wife getting ready to get their skate on, the ice skating rink is suprisingly not called Ringu Park. We searched for the rink for a while and I was convinced that the sign that read Ringu Park was the skating place.. I was wrong, Dr T is the most violent ice skater ever

Me and the Mrs by the Kitty Hawk insignia

Dr T, Me, the Mrs, Blondie, Slimey Steve, the Mexican’t (my tiny wife had to take a shot of tequilla for him one night.. and he is Mexican!!) and Lars in Yokosuka

I dared Dr T to order a drink on the rocks at the Ice Bar and he did… idiot… for some reason your lips and tongue won’t stick to these ice glasses… we all tried….

The wife and Dr T lounging on the ice sofa

It was great to see Dr T since I haven’t seen his dumb ass since before he left for Japan… it was good to see how much he grown since moving out there.. he has gone to more places this year than his previous 30+ years and he has also surrounded himself with very cool people. He also parties like we never did in college, come home at 6am sleep till 7am and then go to work.. only one night we all passed out when our power nap turned into a full on sleep of the dead.. other than that.. every night was soaked with tequilla and made me realize that I can’t hang with true party people anymore… Tokyo and Yokosuka were awesome, Coco Curry, peeing outside the apt, 3rd Deck Warriors, Shore Patrol serenading, babies up at 3am, giggling karaoke and giggling puking, fare adjustments , Kiddy Land, Hugs from Blondie, tabulating score on the rail, Yokohama Starbucks, Dirty Director, no passports at New Sanno, Mountain Song, “I like snake.. I like rat”,  the latest and greatest in mink and hobo technology, ”…. i’ll tell you the story later”, more cigarettes than I care to count and of course finally taking a shitty on the kitty will be thought of whenever I think about Japan.

Thanks to Dr T for showing us a great time in the land of the rising sun. See you in Philly!!

Left for Shanghai on Dec 29th on the 1:30am flight from JFK direct to Pudong Int’l Airport… luckily my Dad told us that we had to arrive crazy early in order to get good seats since they don’t take advanced seating.. nice.. so we arrived at JFK at 9pm for a 1:30 am flight.. but lucked out and got two of the bulkhead seats.. making the 15 hour flight a little less torturous….but China Eastern is horrible horrible airline…service is just nowhere near the standards of Singapore or Cathay Pacific….not even in the same ballpark, they asked us to move in order to let a mother use a crib, a two hour flight.. no prob.. 15 hours no uh.. and we got to the airport 4 hours early to get these seats.. too bad.. and besides.. the two other bulkhead seats were empty and there were single seats in the row of four still empty.. why would they want to move a couple?…either way I told the stewardess hell no….anyways.. I finally got my ass to mainland China for the first time ever for me… and Shanghai was as I expected …super frenetic with construction.. ridiculously polluted air… most days you could not even see any blue in the sky even on a sunny day… but one thing I didn’t expect.. it was freakin freezing….but most importantly.. the food was all I hoped for and then some…

The folks and Yang’s Fry Dumpling hard at work… they are easy to spot.. the only joint along this street market with a line out the door any time of day

Fresh batch of shen jian bao coming out.. this dude does not have oven mitts… just folded pieces of cardboard.. they let him pour the grease from the old batch into the new one… mmm…dumpling grease

These guys are the most perfect dumplings in the world… thicker skin on the bottom flash fried crisp… thinner softer skin on the top holding in all the broth and topped with sesame seeds and scallions… inside minced pork with garlic and ginger…. so fresh and hot and 4 of these bad boys for about $0.40

View of the Bund from a rooftop hotel bar

View over the Huang Pu river towards Pudong, the new digs are way to the right of this photo.. about a 5 minute cab ride to the landmark TV tower

Some of IM Pei’s sweet architecture at the Suzhou Museum, modern take on classical lines

My dad getting his candle prayer on at a temple

The wife peeking out of a window at the Suzhou Museum

Mopeds getting ready to roll off the ferry, we ran for the ferry after going buck wild at the custom clothes center since there were no cabs to be found… my Dad threw 10 RMB (little over a buck)  at the clerk for four ferry tickets… and got 4 RMB back…( fifty cents)…after we crossed decided to ride the bus back to the apt complex… then we stopped at the bakery where my wife decided to eat garbage…as we picked out baked goods from the display.. my wife passes a tray near the register with two wax paper bags and some big pieces of puff pastry on the tray..and decides to eat it… then as a woman walks by her and gives her the stink eye she puts down the other piece of … well garbage… we never went back to that bakery

My Dad sporting a pair of sweet Oakleys during a bubble tea break

Yummy yummy duck and buns, crazy tasty little sandwiches of smoked duck

Me and the Mrs at the Humble Administrator’s Garden

The wife with cotton candy after our night of street food for dinner

It was this cold in “our” room in my parent’s new apartment… the wife burrito.. electric heat is not the same as gas heat

One of the streets full of little shops in the old French Concession… sorta like the Village before the $50,000 rents took over

The Shanghai staple.. Xiao Long Bao (Little Basket Dumplings) at Ding Tai Fong Restaurant.. the broth in these little things is delicious.. we saw much bigger versions of these with straws stuck in them…mmm broth thru a straw

Another Shanghai culinary highlight.. hairy crab… these mothers are pricey… almost $20 USD per… like usual not enough meat to work payoff for me.. but I guess tasty

Engrish signs

The wife smirking as she dragged us to the location of the first meeting place of the communist party in China

The two of us digging on street food, my sweet orange “North Face” jacket cost me less than $20 USD.. and it did squat in keeping me warm… fake winter coats are a bad idea

As you might gather food was a big part of the trip for us.. so was getting foot massages.. but they make pretty boring pictures… although the little one did get a kick out of hearing my Dad squeal when getting put into a full nelson by tiny PRC girls… Shanghai is like most other major Asian cities… drivers are insane.. there are LV, Gucci and Chanel stores every few miles.. but the number of hi rise buildings can make even a native NYer look up every once in a while.. but I am used to a city of 8 million… Shanghai is busitng at the seams with 20 million and in Shanghai.. manpower is cheap… I got a suit made for $80 USD and shirts made for $10 USD…. overall the trip was pretty cool.. we got to see and do some cool stuff along with the usual feather ruffling when you put people together for long periods of time on end.. but nothing like Greece and Turkey with both Moms…but let’s just say next time a week or so will be long enough… Shanghai is a very cool city and I am looking forward to discovering more of it the next time I go back… by then my parents should have gotten their car and we won’t be slaves to taxis and jammed into a tiny VW Santana… there were more than a few occassions I found myself muttering how much I hate Chinese people, spitting everywhere and no sense of personal space.. and they are not bashful about throwing a few elbows if you are in their way… must be some deep seeded self hate issues with me

cost of getting into a cab in Shanghai = 11 RMB… little over a buck…

cost of getting into a cab in Tokyo = 660 Yen… almost 7 bucks… yikes….

This was my first trip to Shanghai but will def not be my last since I plan to go back and see my folks at least once a year… so expect to see plenty of more pics from Shanghai