I got back from China about 2 weeks ago, but I am just now putting up the photos.

It was my 3rd time in Beijing and these trips are really different from each other. I took this one to visit CAFA, galleries, the pandas, pigeon lofts and to hang out with my Pop. Also… running into the cherry blossom season in Japan was a nice treat, too.

Take a look at the photos here »

Also… previous trips:

Shanghai, Beijing & Hangzhou 3/2007 »

Beijing 9/2006 »

It is more pink in Brooklyn at 8am!

Cherry blossoms from a secret admirer.

New York has a serious obsession/infatuation problem with Japan-imports.

Just to name a few… Muji, Uniqlo, BAPE (oh gawd…), sushi and, of course, ramen. Tonight, I tried the much [over]hyped ramen at Ippudo, a recently opened New York shop of a Japan chain. We waited 1 hour and 15 minutes for a table… The soup was good, but not spectacular. The pork, noodles and dessert were delicious though.  I don’t remember the real Ippudo as a trendy $15 bowl of ramen.

I guess recession does not mean a thing to us New Yorkers. We will pay anything to taste that new bowl of ramen in town after we buy some 100%-marked-up Muji goods. (By the way, I LOVE ramen and Muji, just not at NY prices.)

Here is one splendid Japan-import, though, Yebisu beer at $6 a bottle.

Shout outs to my Ebisu peeps. Woot!

NYC calorie craze… My favorite thing to get from Chipotle is the burrito bowl with chips and 1300 calories and 3288mg of sodium.

Chipotle calculator

This is the way the Web should be…

sometimesredsometimesblue.com

isitchristmas.com

itwillneverbethesame.com

defiantdog.com

thebestdinosaur.com

I am sitting in the Yahoo Internet cafe in Narita Airport right now. The internet is free here and you get to sit however long you wish (maybe) in front of a 12″ monitor and a Japanese keyboard.

After 4 days of being ill from consuming foul seafood at a Beijing shabu shabu joint, I was able to get on the plane for New York at 8am this morning. It was a rough morning after I said goodbye to my dad. Then that Jay Chou stepped on my foot in the Beijing airport terminal train. He said sorry and I gave him a mean stare.

I am still a little ill and definitely went for the barf bag after reaching altitude of 30000 feet. I went for the barf bag in the bathroom, after meals were served, and after the man next to me finished his meal so I wouldn’t have to bother him to get out for the bathroom during his meal. I am glad it was an easy flight because I think I was in there for a long time…

With my 7 hour layover in Tokyo, I decided to go into Narita. Coincidentally, the drum(?) matsuri was in session. Pretty cool… I suppose Narita is worth a visit if you have a 6 hour layover and don’t want to go into Tokyo. It is a really small town but it is only 1 stop away from the airport. There is this one big temple there, some traditional crafts stores, pickled vegetables, a grocery store, a drugstore and many eel restaurants. Oh, and there was a takoyaki place right outside of the Keisei Narita station if you want your fix.

Photos to come… I am heading back to New York now.

Visited Central Academy of Fine Arts campus today. Shook hands and chatted with Lu Shengzhong, a pretty cool artist dude. I saw his stuff at the V&A Museum for the first time last year in London and was pretty blown away by it… so it kinda felt like I was meeting with a celeb.

This is for the Isozaki-philes.

What happens when there are more than 365 things, places and etc to talk about in one day? In more than 360 degrees? Today, I visited 798, an artist/gallery community in the eastern part of Beijing for the first time. I am not going to talk about the site history, but it is really cool so you should really check it out. Anyway, it was interesting to see this so-called “avant garde” part of the Chinese and Beijing’s culture. There were some good and bad art, but the experience was really unique. The photo above is a busted steam pipe (?) on one of the streets in the community. I sat there and watched it for about 15 minutes… I wonder if someone fixed it eventually?

Mirror image/time machine.