Thursday, June 15, 2006

Back to Home

Finally settled down from traveling around eastern Canada and Big Apple, New York. The trip was extremely busy and extraordinarily fantastic. I wish I could stay each cities longer to have a better look.

The unforgettable trip started from the world heritage, Quebec City, Canada, where I was expecting to be the best city in this trip and came out to be disappointing at some points. It was completely a city for tourists. Gift shops, groups of school kids, huge tour busses everywhere. The pity of being chosen as a world heritage is it becomes too famous and changes its original environment and lives of local people. Chosen to be protected, but destroy what it was supposed to protect. What an irony is that. However, it was a beautiful city and worth taking time to walk around.

The second stop was Montreal where I found it the most lovable city. Totally French. Didn't understand anything people talk and signs on the street. Only words I understand were "Merci" and "Bon appetit" which didn't help me to have conversations with local people. I was just amazed by the visual beauty of the city. Fashionable people walking by, incredible graffiti in every corner, old, colourful, unique houses along streets, many people having some drinks at terrace after cool rain and enjoying a short afternoon with warm sunshine. Everything was inspiring. One of the cities where I would love to live.

The next stop, Toronto, was nothing special or impressive. I visited some Museums and I don't remember rest of the stay except the Canadian beer I had was nice.

The second world heritage I visited, Niagara Falls were worth seeing, but the surrounding was disappointing. The power of Falls were remarkablly huge. The amount of water, the sound it makes, rain-like amount of splashing...just huge. The thing bothers me was the Las Vegas-like town next to the falls which was totally unneccessary and depreciate the greatness of the holly falls.

After 9 hours of being on the train from Niagara, I arrived at the last city of this trip, New York City. It was exactly what I expected; fantastic. A week was definitely not enough to see everything. Even though I saw only some parts including tourist places of the city, I enjoyed the stay and loved it very, very much. Especially the place I slept for a week, a cheap hostel in Chelsea, made the stay more interesting. Many people, cultures, and arts from all over the world got together in New York. You hear different languages more often than English on the streets, subways, shops and restaurants. Feel like being on a miniture globe. One of the attractions I was very looking forward was visiting galleries, but, silly me, I forgot about they usually close on Sundays and Mondays, I failed to manage visiting some valuable ones. Still a few galleries I could see were great.

And now, I am back to my home, Japan. Completely different from every city I visited. Although I feel comfortable returning the life I got used to, at the same time, cannot help feeling awkward being here after months of staying another environment. The same house, the same people, the same climate I have known for years and years, but I think I am not the same as before. Back to home physically, but not spiritually.

3 Comments:

Blogger My Top Ten said...

Too many gifuto shoppus in Quebec? Too bad!
Enjoy Japan! I'd be interested in your cosmopolitan outlook in English on your very strange home country!

11:35 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hope you have a nice trip home! I can't wait to see some photos from Japan :)

~Chris~

7:55 PM  
Blogger My Top Ten said...

By the way, the photo with the Statue of Liberty is really cool! Unless you just bought a small statueesque in gifuto shoppu and arranged it :)

11:48 AM  

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