Vacation Part 1: Canada

I am back from my 1 1/2 week vacation. Whenever I go on vacation I go on a computer strike, partly because I want to focus my attention on the vacation and not be distracted by my email or facebook. It was kind of a 3 part vacation. Shinsuke had a presentation at the AATJ conference in Canada so we decided to do some sightseeing there. Then our plan was to stop by New York to see some of the historical sights for the Church and after that go to Indiana to spend time with my family.

The conference was in Toronto, Canada. This was my first time to Canada, but I wasn't really impressed. Maybe I was expecting it to be more similar to the US or I was just easily irritable from my pregnancy hormones. Here are a few things that made me not like Toronto so much:
           
1. The customer service was awful and most the time the food was only OK. At one restaurant the waiter never refilled my water cup, and he only refilled Shinsuke's once. Also, I am pretty sure the lettuce they used for their $13 salad was from a bag and the lettuce in ours was mostly the yellow-green bitter lettuce.

2. Gas stations were ridiculously hard to find. On the highway there was never really indications of exits with gas stations and even driving around in the city it was hard to spot them.

3. Overpricing. This probably only applies to a castle we went to see. The admission was $20 for one person. Though, our hostel we stayed at was $50 a night. This seems a little expensive for a small room with six people in it. It was clean at least.

Canada was still fun, though. I attended the conference as well. Some of the panels were pretty interesting while others were just boring (one of the presentations was just numbers they had gotten from their study and they didn't elaborate on what the numbers meant or what they were going to do to further their study). Not to be biased, but Shinsuke's panel was one of the more interesting ones. One of the presenters on his panel did a study on first person story telling in Japanese. The way you narrate something that happened is different in Japanese in that Japanese don't really act out what happened (in English we tend to imitate someone else a lot more often). In Japanese you would use "he said" more. I can't explain it really well, but the presentation was interesting and informative.

After the conference we spent a day sightseeing in Canada. Shinsuke and I went with another couple (his colleagues Ben and Young Fe) to Niagara Falls and then to a European castle that was near our hostel. It was cool getting to walk along side the falls. It was hard to take good pictures, but a few turned out. The Maid of the Mist cruise wasn't running yet, but that might have been a good thing since we didn't expect the castle to be so expensive. On a side note, before we left Niagara falls we stopped at Tim Hortons for lunch. I got the lasagna and garlic bread. The lasagna did not have cheese and was very bland. And the donut Shinsuke got wasn't that tasty. I wonder if the Tim Hortons in the States are any better. 

Anyway, even though the castle was expensive it was cool getting to tour a European castle. We got to go up one of the towers which required going up a lot of steep, narrow stairs. We came across some cosplayers that were doing a photo shoot. I have no idea who they were cosplaying, but their costumes were very pretty. If they had been Japanese I might have asked, but they were Korean and I wasn't sure how well they knew English.

Our day ended with dinner in China town. We met up with Karen and Saori at a dim sum restaurant called Rol San. It was the best Chinese food I had eaten in awhile. It reminded me of the Chinese food that I ate in Japan. The waiters didn't have the best attitudes and they seemed annoyed when I kept asking for refills on my water (they eventually just left a pitcher of water) but that didn't spoil the great time we had.

I will end this post with a little information about the hostel we stayed in. This was my first time staying in a hostel and I was a little hesitant because it sounded like it would be dirty and cramped. I was surprised when we arrived because everything was clean, though, kind of old. Five of us (Shinsuke, Ben, Young Fe, Karen, and I) stayed in a six person room. The sixth person was a guy from Korea who had come to Toronto looking for a job. The room was small but big enough to squeeze in 3 bunk beds. We did have our own bathroom, but it was small as well. Despite the lack of space, staying in the hostel was kind of fun.

I will be back with part two about our time in New York.