People's Park Shanghai

Near the other end of Nanjing Road, opposite The Bund, is a public park aptly called as People's Park. Originally, I wanted to visit Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall located in the same area. Unfortunately, I didn't know that the latter is closed every Monday, so I lost interest in visiting the museum and crossing the road to see People's Square.

Anyway, my wife and I entered the park from the gate between exits 16 and 17 of the People's Square station of subway lines 1, 2 and 8. Since it was winter, the trees were dull and there wasn't so much color. There is a mini-theme park in the middle, though we didn't check it out.

Following the path that led us to the center, we got into a garden-like area where we found the Museum of Contemporary Art. We weren't interested and it wasn't also free, so we didn't go in. There was also a big pond, and there were a lot of locals hanging out playing games near that pond. I thought most of them were gambling because I saw money on the tables, but didn't have the guts to come closer and see what they were actually doing.

Going around the pond, we thought we'd be back to where we got in, but we found ourselves going out of the park from a different gate. It looked like the northern side of the park and what seemed to be the main gate. This gate was near exit 9 of the station.

Nanjing Road

This should be a prequel to the previous post about The Bund, as Nanjing Road, from west to east, actually leads towards The Bund. Yes, I walked along Jiujiang Road from Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel to The Bund, but running parallel with that road is Nanjing Road, which is said to be the world's longest shopping district and one of its busiest shopping streets, as per Nanjing Road's Wikipedia entry.

Since it's fairly close to our hotel, I was able to check-out more shops than I really thought I could. I also thought that I would find shopping in Shanghai cheaper since most of the products are made there in China, but I was really disappointed about that. For comparison's sake, my souvenir shirt from Nike Singapore cost 39 SGD, while the one I bought in Nike Shanghai cost 199 CNY. The exchange rate when I was in Singapore may be different, but I think the idea is that the prices do not have much difference.

Anyway, here are some of my pictures of Nanjing Road. In the middle of the second picture is our hotel. There were back and forth "trains" for tourists, though I forgot how much it cost for a ride. The last picture shows a building with a thermometer, showing that it was around 12 degrees Celsius when I was there - not bad for winter.

The Bund

The Bund is arguably the most famous area in Shanghai. It is a waterfront area with a view that resembles the ones in Avenue of the Stars in Hong Kong and Osanbashi pier in Yokohama, Japan. Like those two spots, the Bund may be visited during the day, but it may be better to check it out at night.

There's no train station that's exactly on The Bund, but I think the nearest one would be East Nanjing Road of subway Line 2, though I never really had to take the train going there since our hotel, Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel, was fairly close to the area. It was just a 15-minute walk along Jiujiang Road, and I saw the said train station along the way. Anyway, the area is like a park, so there's no need to pay any admission fee, though there's really an actual park, Huangpu Park, on the northern side of the area. I wasn't able to go there as I was satisfied with the view of the Pudong area from the viewing deck. There's also a pedestrian tunnel through the river, but since it was New Year's eve when I was there, there were really too much people for me and I just decided to go back to the hotel before the actual New Year festivities started. Here are my pictures of The Bund.

The 43rd Tokyo Motor Show 2013 (第43回東京モーターショー2013)

After seeing the cars in the 42nd Tokyo Motor Show last December 2011, I immediately looked forward to the next installment of this event, which at that time, I assumed to be sometime in winter of 2012. When I didn't see any advertisement, I resigned to the fact that I missed an event that I was really excited about. To my surprise, there were posters of the 43rd edition as autumn of 2013 came. I checked their website and that's the only time I knew that it was a biennial event.

Anyway, this event was held from November 23-December 1, 2013, again at the Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba, Tokyo. Just like last time, pre-ordered tickets were cheaper. Prices were the same - JPY 1,300 for advanced purchase and JPY 1,500 for same day tickets. Here are some of the cars (and bikes among others) that I saw this time around.