I never thought that I would travel in Japan since I witnessed countless breathtaking landscapes in Western Sichuan and Tibet. However, things changed after I landed at Narita Airport.

I gotta say, I had a pretty good experience travelling here. I remember as soon as I stepped off the jet bridge, I could smell a refreshing fragrance in the airport (it was present wherever people had been, and the scent was remarkably consistent; I even suspected that everyone in this country used the same perfume). Later, I realized that it might be because I was using the same laundry detergent or fabric softener.

Besides, the people here are generally very clean. I saw that the streets were clean, the cars were clean, the houses were clean, and even the toilets were clean. Although I had heard about this online before, seeing it in person was still quite impressive; it’s wonderful. Also, I realized as I was leaving that I didn’t seem to smell any secondhand smoke on the street, which is a real relief for someone like me with rhinitis.

What’s more, based on my experience with the locals (mainly those in the service industry), they were all very polite. Although I don’t understand Japanese, the various honorifics and bows made me feel a little uncomfortable. Anyway, I would definitely come back if I had the chance.

台场眺望东京塔&六本木，天气之子打卡地

苫小牧海岸

苫小牧王子造纸

苫小牧海岸

札幌新千岁机场

洞爷湖

隅田川

羽田机场

Tokyo Dome 东京巨蛋

浅草寺

隅田川

东京站&丸之内

Roppongi, Tokyo Tower and Rainbow Bridge

品川港

森户海岸&真名濑海岸

真名濑车站

森户海岸&真名濑海岸

叶山町&逗子市

叶山町&逗子市

叶山町&逗子市

日暮里站附近

海岸

同时进近成田的国内航班，海航or深航

进近东京成田机场，左手方向 富士山

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To be honest, I was a bit confused after visiting the newly built contemporary park yesterday.

The library is beautiful—modern glass walls and perfect wooden designs. It looks like it belongs in a big city’s business district. But here, it’s surrounded by factories and farms. It feels out of place, like serving expensive wine in a plastic cup. The quality is great, but the combination is just weird.

Then there’s the “Yoga Hotel.” It costs over 1,000 RMB a night. In an area full of factory workers and farmers, I have to ask: who is the target audience? Is a worker really going to spend half a month’s pay on a room? This is a classic case of “dreaming big” but ignoring the reality of the local residents.

The irony is that this “temple of culture” has become the best place for locals to just hang out and enjoy the air conditioning.

The best example is the vinyl record of The Legend of 1900 on the shelf. In the movie, the pianist never dared to leave the ship because the world on land was too big and scary. This library is the same: it stays inside its “glass bubble” with its fancy books and music, too afraid to actually connect with the messy, dusty world outside.

It plays its elegant music, while the locals walk in and out like curious tourists. They come to take photos and relax, but in their eyes, these books belong to a completely different world.

The contrast is everywhere. You might be reading a serious book, while the person next to you is watching loud, silly videos on their phone. You admire the architecture, while a child is running around making a mess.

In the end, there is no connection here. The government spent a sea of funds to look “high-class,” but the local life is still pretty traditional.

Is it a failure? Not really, since it’s a popular park. But is it worth it? When a huge investment is mostly used as a background for social media, you have to wonder.

As I left, I couldn’t help but think: The suit is expensive, but it just doesn’t fit the person wearing it.

Everyone welcomes new users. Although we are not very familiar with each other’s language, we communicate in a friendly and enthusiastic manner with the assistance of translation software and cute emojis(like cat pics). At this moment, billions of people have crossed mountains and oceans and gathered together. People hugged each other, sang, and danced. There is no war, no hatred, no discrimination and prejudice. This is a wonderful moment. What a beautiful world at this moment.

This moment will go down in the history of the Internet

I am very moved. I think this is exactly what Michael Jackson’s song “We Are The World” wants to express. I hope this moment can last.

By the way, I shared my thoughts with ChatGPT, he replied to me this. Damn! I love this.

Maybe that was the last trip I can experience in China, so it was the reason why I agreed to been there with my buddy. Unfortunately, I got a bad news that my study permit was refused on the second day of my journey. What’s more, the IRCC posted a notice that they suddenly cancelled a policy which has been implemented for many years. As a result, I had to reconsider my project to study abroad and make a new plan to face this challenge. I had to admit that I wasn’t in the mood to travel, but I had no idea what should I do in the next step. This was because I thought I would be rejected but I never thought the authority could change their policies suddenly. I spent the next few days in anxiety, thinking about news plans and travelling.

The good news was the air quality and weather condition there were highly great, so I had the opportunity to seize some precious moments and capture great photos. For instance, we went to two scenic spots and there were only a few others tourists there compared with other periods so we could stay there so long and almost occupy all the best viewing points without queuing or enduring noisy vibes and enquire excellent experience.

Sunset in Aba

I can’t remember how many times I’ve been to Yunnan. There are many places I adore there, such as Dali, Yuxi, Jianshui, Mengzi…

I just bought a new camera. Here are some photos I took with the Sony A6600, a Chinese-made Mingjiang 56mm lens, and a Sony 28-70mm lens.

I have to admit that feeling is not good because I have the same terrible symptom as that of last year — my nose cannot smell any scents but a kind of strange scent, it smells like some rare chemical products, even though I had never smelt it before. Except for this, I got a lower fever (compare with that in last year, that was 38℃ or more) and there was no change in appetite. In general, the symptom was not as severe as that last time.

A few months ago, I read some short popular science articles about medicine and evolution. I found that not only the human beings are evolving, but also other creatures are developing, even including bacteria and virus. As we all know, microbes are widely found around every corner and we can detect numerous microbes on our body. Normally, we live in peace with those microorganisms, but things get complicated when a human is sick. Let’s say, you had burnt the midnight oil and you got tired and weak, then the immunity decreased and some pathogens may take the opportunity to invade our body and damage our health. After striking human’s body, these bastards are going to replicate up to hundreds viruses during a short time (maybe only a few minutes). Fortunately, our immune system is still working, it is able to perceive invaders and take actions to against invaders. For example, a sea of white blood cells will rush to where intrusions take place in and engulf pathogens when they found those invaders.

Whenever I read these popular science essays, I can’t help but sigh that the human body is what a well-designed system that I doubt that whether the theory of evolution is true. Sometimes, this system runs like a computer which is consist of multiple delicate components, which contribute to its powerful capacity to face to any challenges. When we are depressed, maybe we can think of there is a bunch of inconspicuous little guys who are doing their best to protect this body.

We had been to grasslands, colourful ponds, snowy mountains, isolated villages, sharp peaks and deep valleys. We understood how great the Yellow River was, what’s more, we witnessed a horse race in person, which impressed me a lot. Apart from this, we passed through an extremely cold night since there wasn’t sufficient quilt and blanket in that hotel.

Let’s get back to the business. As a massive fan of The Escape Plan, I searched tons of their music videos on many video platforms including Bilibili and Youku, unfortunately, some of them were removed later. What impressed me most was a music documentary entitled 66°N, this video told the journey that The Escape Plan travelled from Beijing to Norway by plane and cruise, and then they performed several shows on the ship they took. Actually, this was a commercial because some noted enterprises invited them and paid them the necessary expenses on the journey, as far as I know, BMW, SAS and LeTV Music were their sponsors. I was fond of all the music that appeared in this documentary. I found their names and saved them in music apps, but there was only one piece of background music that I could not know its exact name or author. Apparently, this problem bothered me for so long.

A few years later, I just scrolled through social media and I watched this video again, I posted a comment with a try-it attitude. I asked people who knew the name of the melody on that duration, then I forgot about that. Miraculously, today I found someone replied to my comment and gave the exact title of that music, I am over the moon! What a wonderful experience! What’s more, this piece of instrumental music is named Beautiful Wonder, I’m so pleased to dedicate it to all those who love music. (Well, you can click the play button on the player under the article, and if you can’t see the button, maybe you can copy the URL link and open it in other browsers or try to open it on your PC :< )

Task 1  2024-01-23

The provided bar graph illustrates the data of expenditure of fast foods weekly and the tendency expense of fast foods in Britain.

In terms of the preference of the high income citizens, it is obviously that the figure of hamburger is much more than others. The rest two types of fast foods have the similar data at approximately 16.

When it comes to the number of middle class, we can see that hamburgers are purchased by guests at most(33), followed by fish & chips (25) and pizza (12) respectively.

It is interesting to note that the popularity of fast foods in population who with weak financial status. Among this group, customers are more willing to buy fish & chips, by contrast, the figure of hamburger and pizza are at about 14 and 6.

It can be clearly seen that, hamburger is generally the most popular food among diverse classes of residents, while the pizza is the least popular choice across consumers with distinct level of income. Besides, the rich spend more on fast foods than the poor.

Xu was an ordinary young man with a common family background and experience before he started his trip, he did not get a good diploma or a well-paying job offer. He was puzzled about his future and life. Maybe he was inspired by some thoughts or influenced by someone, he decided to start a long-riding trip to find the meaning of life. This was an unusual decision in China, as it is widely believed that a man should work on a stable career and get married after graduation. People commonly think a long trip is not the right thing for an adult and one can do this only when he/she is retired.

In recent years, more and more Chinese start accepting new ideas including that above, especially when people find that some vloggers can make a fortune just with some short videos, while those ones used to be supposed to be a group of chair warmers. According to this phenomenon, we can draw a conclusion, at least a part of the Chinese are realists and they care about realistic benefits rather than some ideal purposes.

After serval months of trips, Xu’s videos became popular and he got one of the top riding vloggers on the Chinese Internet, he got millions of fans on video websites. As a result, he earned much money from his videos and some firms wanted him to advertise for their products. Actually, I hardly found any obvious ad in Xu’s over 300 vlogs, except for some special short videos. In China, it was called “不忘初心”, which means a man did not forget his original beliefs after he became successful. This is an important reason why fans like Xu. Moreover, Xu is always polite, humble, knowledgeable, and neat. He always clean up every place he lived in and never leave any trash, even if those places are dirty before.

Xu took about 2 years to travel around China. He had been to many places, for instance, Tibet, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Northeast. This Summer, Xu made a decision that he would go abroad. He told the audience that he wants to see the aurora in Iceland and that he will ride his cycle to North Europe. To be honest, I look forward to his new journey to Iceland since I like polar lights very much, and seeing them is my dream.

Unfortunately, last night, Xu said he had finished his tour and he will never post riding vlogs in the future after one and a half months trip. And finally, he arrived in Mid-Asia. What a pity! I feel pitiful for his decision because he can not have an opportunity like this time. However, I can understand his decision for there are many difficulties with his travel. Most of the time, the vlogger showed how beautiful the scenery is and how wonderful his journey is, but the more you travel out, the more you feel lonely and alone. Besides, updating videos became a task for him, as so many fans urge Xu to vlog posting. He must be very tired(mentally) I guess.

Anyway, Xu is an excellent vlogger and I support his decision. At the same time, I think of the story of Forrest Gump. In the beginning, Gump started a long run but for no reason. Some people saw Gump as a freak. Gump ran through prairies, forests, farms, and the sea, and he also ran through spring, summer, autumn, and winter. His footprints are across the whole country. While after Forrest had been to many places, with many news reports of Gump, he became a celebrity and there were more and more people touched by Gump and joined Gump’s running team. People speculated about his motives for running. Someone said he running for fame and someone believed his purpose is environmental protection. Nobody believes Gump running for no reason. However, one day, Gump suddenly stopped in front of the people of his running team and decided to return to his hometown. I think Xu’s some part of experience looks like that of Gump’s, thus I believe Xu Yun realized that his life has to make a change so he was desperate to go home.