Corbin's Awesome Adventures in the Land of the Rising Sun: A Tale of Two Cities (Part VIII)

With my Beijing trip over, it was time to head back to Shanghai and finally get to see the city.

It was a really boring train ride. There was something funny or weird or something on the TV, but apparently I failed to get a good picture of it.

All along the trip, there'd be sudden cities of just the same tower copy-pasted over and over with nothing but flatland around for miles.

I took a few pictures of the scenery. I really had nothing better to do anyway.

As I traveled farther from Beijing, the sky got clearer and clearer, the opposite of what happened when I had gone to Beijing, only furthering my appreciation of how polluted their air is.

That guy has my bag!

So after getting out of the arrivals gate, I was met with a wall of people. They were holding signs that looked like collages, containing pictures of various hotels and taxi services. I was more of a target because I was obviously a tourist. Still, I managed to make it through relatively unharmed.

Almost.

Maps on demand!

So I walked over to a kiosk to wait for my friend, who had arrived before me. I decided to use some roaming to try to reach him. He was why I had swapped my schedule around, and why Shanghai was the second half of my trip, so I figured I should find him.

It had a fairly neat animation with the occasional ad in between.

I wasn't there long before one of the people working for a hotel or taxi or something spotted me. He tried to get me to buy whatever it was he was selling, but I was already sick of dealing with pushy people so I told him no. He didn't go away. So I yelled "Shoo!" and pointed, and he just repeated "Shoo!" I then just tried to ignore him, but he just waited with me. And waited and waited. After some time, he sat down and waited more. When he got bored, he just started spinning his sign on his finger. Someone passing by, a coworker or something, saw this and laughed with him. Eventually, after 20 minutes, he finally got bored enough to give up and leave. It wasn't much longer that I also gave up and went and got food.

Then I headed back to the hostel I had stayed at when I first arrived in China.

They had some weird art in some places.

I knew I was being rough with them and was pretty sure I'd break them, and sure enough, when I yanked my headset from my backpack, I did snap them. They had faithfully served me for 9+ years. RIP.

Unlike the Wall hostel, this one didn't come with cats. There was a cat outside though one of the days, just cattin' it up.

The reasonable solution would have been to repair the electrical risk, but not this hostel.

I set out to meet my friend. I foolishly believed I could walk there without getting lost and be on time. And yet I succeeded somehow.

More free work-out equipment. It's even colorful.

Daoist whales. Japan would have eaten them.

Yet more workout gear. Too bad the air cancels out any health benefits.

While walking over, I took some photos of the city.

Free wifi! (For the Chinese) Finally, a use for phonebooths.

I got some pictures of their crosswalk dudes. Somewhere near the hostel was an interesting U-Turn light (complete with a yellow) that I didn't get a change to get a picture of.

Surprisingly, I managed to find where my friend was supposed to meet me. Unfortunately, we didn't have a very clear meet-up spot, and he was rather late.

So I just camped out by an entrance and hoped for the best.

Eventually we did meet up, and he proceeded to photobomb all my photos with his attempts at metal.

We got some food from a kind of buffet-style place thing. I told him about my lost money and he helped out a little, which was nice.

Then we didn't know what to do, so we wandered.

And also, I took more photos of streetlights.

We saw the occasional street vendor selling mysterious things (but no scorpions).

We decided to go to the place where you can see the skyline (except for all the smog).

But first, we stopped at this very Naruto Lawson we ran into.

Found more disappointingly regular Oreos (and some Chinese knock-offs [thus further proving the Chinese do actually like them]).

So many flavors.

Engrish aside, that's good advice. Where was the sign I needed?

America!

World's largest lion or world's smallest man? Also, penguins.

Well, you can't really view the city through all the smog anyway, so come look at lasers and lights and stuff.

So many flags. Aside from America, I've never been in a country that flew as many of their country's flag. It looked pretty cool.

It's that guy again! Less plasticy, more metally.

Finally made it to the photo-taking spot, and got this sweet picture.

Then we had nothing to do again, so we went back to wandering around.

I wonder how censored this is. Still, it'd've be nice to see.

I found the helm of China.

More vendors.

We ended up in some random back alleys.

Okay, Angry Birds, this has gone too far.

Giant, America-sized lollipops.

Oh look, Peking duck again!

What is that man doing to that bike?

The New World!

The kid's head is attached to his arm instead of his neck. Also, is that man levitating with sound waves from his farts?

My friend is clever.

Shanghai sewer cover.

Awesome little police car thing.

We stopped at a somewhat fancy restaurant. The menu was pretty funny. Lots of drunk, hairy food. Also those quotation marks worry me.

Cold water was apparently a mystery to them, so I had to ask for ice.

Apparently toilet paper wasn't provided. You had to buy it.

And it didn't even come out as a roll.

Another style of Shanghai sewer lid.

The city pass cards required a down payment, but let you ride everything from buses and trains to taxis and boats.

My friend was staying by some kind of golden temple thing. I'm not sure how old it was though, might have been more recent. It was too bright for any good pictures though.

I'm not sure what the bottom image is warning me against doing, but it looks fun.

My friend had a meeting, since he was actually in Shanghai for work, so I wandered off to go do something for a bit.

I'm not sure I could form my body into that shape. Nor fire spit so rapid-fire.

Not the most helpful map.

Some kind of animal.

Spinning acupuncture or something graph. I guess that's China's version of a haircut.

Pets or food?

So it was about this time that I went to meet my friend who lives in Shanghai. I met up with him and we decided to go get dinner.

Saw this cool wall on the way.

Like Japan, Playboy is more of a clothing brand than a pornography company.

The restaurant was some kind of Indian / west Asian cuisine and it had a very long line, so we took a number and walked around the city a bit.

We passed the Playboy store again on the way out so I could get more photos.

We couldn't get exactly what my friend wanted to show me from this street shop we found, but we did get this mochi with some kind of filling. Probably bean paste, but I forget.

More Shanghai sewer lids.

We walked all the way back to where I was taking photos of the skyline earlier.

Now I have a photo of the skyline (read: smog) in daylight and at night.

The streets were pretty packed with pedestrians.

On the way back, I heard some girl(s) call out to me. I immediately realized it was probably another scam girl. We kept walking past, and I asked my friend if my suspicion was true and he confirmed. I got really mad and I wanted to go back and figure out some way to lure them into getting arrested or something. Anything to get them off the street where they could hurt someone, but I realized there wasn't much I could do. Anything I did would just endanger myself further and also I had other things I should have been doing - like our dinner reservation. Still, I ended up thinking the whole trip about plans to catch these kind of scam artists.

We got to pass the Playboy store one more time and I finally got a picture of the strange things they sold other than clothing. They sold all kinds of outdoor gear, too. Including binoculars, which I guess could be relevant.