IZFM! Zouk flash mob takes over the word!!

All summer thousands of people all around the world from Toronto to Melbourne, from Suriname to Singapore, have been practicing for the International Zouk Flash Mob that took place on Sunday Sep 16th. People rehearsed the same choreography and performed it flash mob style at iconic places sush as in front of  the Eiffel tower, the Colosseum, on the beaches of Brazil...

There were about 100 cities in 38 countries that took part in the big event on the same day! I was dancing with the participants of the 4th Zouk & Lambada Beach Festival in Santa Susana, Spain. Here is my funny video of the happening! Me and the deck chair by the pool served as the role of videographer with my camera...

Zouky summer, zouky fall

It's been a busy summer since I got back to Finland at the end of June. I've spent a lot of time with my friends and family - and back at the dance studio! The weekly zouk socials at the Opera stage in Helsinki have gone well and we wrapped up the summer season two weeks ago. Besides the Opera backyard, we've been out dancing zouk at various clubs in Helsinki, in parks and beaches all around, at the summer cottages and even at one midsummer "lavatanssit"!


Mzouk hits Helsinki

In July we had some Mzouk workshops in Helsinki with a Finnish Mzouk teacher-in-training Ossi. The course attracted quite a lot of people - it was nice to get us zoukers together during the summer!

Tracing my steps

This is the full list of places I visited on this 6,5 month trip with links to all the blog posts!

View Full Size Travel Map at Travellerspoint

Dancing away in London - last stop on my big trip!

It was the middle of June and I was reaching the end of my big trip! Actually I was also getting back to square one, to London, where this adventure started over six months earlier. I was dying to be done with the trip, I was missing my friends and family, my own bed.. my clothes :D So this was the next best thing, just one final step away from returning home! Even on the Tokyo airport (from where I flew back to London) they had a flight leaving to my home town, almost the same time as my flight to London, it was killing me!! But it wasn't all that bad - I was going to see & stay with friends in London too and dance dance dance zouk like no tomorrow!

I had to get up early in Tokyo to get to my flight and I wasn't too thrilled. Somehow I managed to fit all my stuff in my two bags and got the airport early - ready to "enjoy" another 12 hour flight. I thought I'd get some sleep but I guess I was too excited to relax enough so I just kicked back and watched a bunch of movies instead. I closed my eyes towards the end of the flight and suddenly I was in London! London, baby!

It was a Friday afternoon and I waddled with my stuff to my friend's place, changed gear and was off - determined to stay awake through the evening and kill any jetlag that was heading my way. So I went to see a zouk class at the famous Pineapple Studios. I had just flown across nine time zones and been up & traveling for about 20 hours so I didn't really feel like taking part in the class. But went to watch just out of curiosity.

The imperial and impressive Kyoto

Kyoto (京都市or Kyōto) is located in the central part of the Honshu island, south of Tokyo. This former imperial capital of Japan is a part of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area and a very popular tourist destination, especially know for its traditional districts and temples.

I was staying in Osaka, just less than an hour away from Kyoto, and took one day to go for a visit. I got very helpful tips from my new friend Mio from Osaka who mapped me a great route through Kyoto! So around noon I arrived from Osaka to Kyoto's Kawaramachi train station, ready to explore the city!

Hills surround this beautiful city and on the hills there are big impressive temple areas. My plan was to go discover the eastern hill and first up was the Yasaka Shrine. It's easy to find the shrine as it's just at the end of the main road - you can't miss the big, red temple gate! I passed through the colourful temple where people were ringing the big bells and continued to a beautiful park called Maruyama Koen. I can just imagine how during spring it's covered with cherry trees blossoming. I heard that the park was also used in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha.

At the Yasaka Shrine

Once upon a time in Osaka...

After a week of being totally amazed by Tokyo I was exited to go see another Japanese city, Osaka! Ōsaka, or 大阪, is a part of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area of close to 20 million people. I'm starting to wonder how many of the world's biggest cities are located in Japan....!?!

It was easy to decide how to get from Tokyo to Osaka: with the Shinkansen train (the bullet train), yay! I had popped by the Tokyo train station before my departure day to check out the place so I would know how to get to 1) the right station and 2) the right platform. There are soooo many stations, terminals, platforms, entrances, escalators and underground passages that it's quite easy to get lost! But I made it! Just a little problem with my tickets at the automatic gates but no worries since there's always lots of helpful staff around! 

The noses of the trains look so funny, some had even longer noses than this one, over 10m!

Zouk in Japan - the surprising latin & Brazilian dance hub!

Believe it or not, you can do lots of latin dancing in Japan, even zouk! And not just in Tokyo but in various locations in the country. I was excited to visit some other cities beyond Tokyo in my quest to find out how is Japanese zouk and extended my time in Japan a couple days just for that :) Tokyo dance scene information follows right below, scroll down for Osaka and Kyoto!

Burning the floor in Tokyo

I didn't know anything about the Japanese zouk scene but am lucky to have friends around the world who used their contacts to find some places and parties for me! There are in fact a few monthly zouk events where the local dancers gather up. I was in town for the “first Saturday of the month” party, also know as Utage zouk, ar the G-Box dance studio in Ebisu. I arrived there on time, at 8.30pm when the party started. There wasn't a whole lot of people then but soon enough the place filled up and was packed with 30 or more dancers from about 9.30pm onwards!

The trendy Tokyo - the most amazing city in the world?

Tokyo - actually Tōkyō or in Japanese 東京 - was, surprise to me, the biggest city of my RTW trip and is by most measures the largest city and metropolitan area in the world! (By the way, the second biggest city on this particular 6,5 month trip was São Paulo and third either Osaka or Buenos Aires.)

It was the beginning of June (...yes, I'm this late on my blog posts...) and I was reaching the end of my big trip. I wanted to have a bit more time in Japan so I had moved my flight from Cairns to Tokyo a couple days earlier. This was one of the rare occasions I used the opportunity to freely adjust the flight plan that I had made end of last year (well the plan basically only included the intercontinental flights so most of my travel plan was created as I went on..).

The flight from Cairns to Tokyo was comfortable, yet quite boring 7,5 hours. I arrived to Narita airport in the evening, pretty tired and not feeling ready to tackle the Tokyo public transport system. I don't know any Japanese, at all. It was the first country on this trip where I was complete lost with the language. But no need to worry, I walked straight to the information desk at the airport and they gave perfectly clear instructions on how to get to my accommodation, in fluent English. It was a 1,5 hour journey to the city and through the city (bear in mind the airport itself is also 60km from downtown Tokyo) but I had no troubles getting around.

I started my sightseeing the next morning. Well actually I had no idea where to start but I had a map and Google and some recommendations. First up I went to Shinjuku to see the urban Tokyo with all the tall buildings. I quickly realized how massive the city is and how easy it is to get lost, especially in the mazes of the subway and train stations.

Paradise lies below the surface... smooth sailing and rough seas at the Great Barrier Reef

After getting soaked for three days in the rainforests north of Cairns I returned to the city to change gear, check mails and sleep. Next morning I had to wake up early, yet again, for my last Australian adventure on this trip! I had managed to switch off my alarm in the morning but luckily I didn’t miss my boat, phef! I was off to a 2 day sailing trip on the Great Barrier Reef - I was so excited!! In stead of taking one of the big boats with 30 or 50 other tourists I had booked a trip on a sailboat... Oh yeah, less people and more time. We were a group of 11 people (Finnish, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, German, French and Canadian) with a crew of 3 on the fantastic Coral Sea Dreaming.

It had been terrible weather all week and lots of wind so I had postponed this trip to the last days, praying the forecast promising better conditions would hold. But not yet: it was sadly a cloudy day when we set out from the Cairns harbour early in the morning. The waves weren't terribly high but the boat was rocking quite heavily and a couple girls were feeling quite ill, one even did the traditional puke over the rail. I felt sad for them, and happy I had taken the motion sickness pill that was offered to everyone before we set off: I felt better than ever!

The gray weather and the gray water. Not the best day to go out on the sea..

"It rains in the rain forest"

It was my last (and very busy) week in Australia and I was spending it around the Far North Queensland. The week was only halfway and after the trips around the waterfalls close to Cairns I headed up the coast! The plan was to make a loop around the rainforest covered area north of Cairns and the town of Port Douglas.

It was a warm winter morning when I hopped on the bus in Cairns. First I would head to a river to cruise down along the mangrove shores and spot some saltwater crocodiles. I was curious whether we would actually see any but sure enough, as if they were planted there, we spotted a couple big ones. Surprisingly even some small saltwater crocks were swimming around and some more safely hanging around close to their mothers. The smallest I saw was 4 weeks old, about 15 cm long little creature, just swimming along the shore. The boat captain said everybody loves the small ones ... especially the big fish: they love to eat them! Snif.. cuties.

Cairns - from one cascade to the other!

It was the end of May and one of those mornings again: an unreasonably early wake-up and off to catch a morning flight from Darwin to Cairns. I felt I had barely fallen asleep the whole night, thanks to the Darwin party people keeping everybody awake (well it was Saturday night so what could I expect). I was counting the days 'til I would be home again, in my own bed, enjoying the peace & quiet…

From one small city to another, I was making my way through the northern parts of Australia. Cairns is the biggest city on the northeast coast, in the middle of tropical nature and the Great Barrier Reef. The city doesn't really have a beach (very strange) but a nice promenade by the sea. This is the centre of most of what's happening in Cairns with big lawn areas, spaces & equipment for the sports enthusiasts and BBQ spots as well as a 4800m2 saltwater swimming lagoon. And a lovely place to go see the sunset!

Lagoon at the Promenade

Darwin - the outback capital

When I was planning my RTW trip I had been very curious about the Northern Australia and the outback so I had decided to add Darwin to my Australian itenerary. I arrived there after very exciting 10 days of dancing in Brisbane and the Gold Coast ... feeling very tired. The hot & humid air of Darwin was a nice change after the chilly nights of Queensland - where I had actually managed to develop a cold. So the first couple days in Darwin I just kicked back, enjoyed the heat and did pretty much nothing. By the third day I was feeling better, happily doing some sightseeing and tanning by the pool. Not bad!

Darwin is quite a small city.. a town really. It's the smallest state capital in Australia though it is clearly the biggest in its territory (Northern Territory). There's basically two main streets that run parallel to the shoreline - and that's it. You'll find plenty of restaurants, bars and shops like in any city; actually there is some quite nice Aboriginal art in some galleries and markets but most shops sell the standard souvenirs. Darwin has in fact a large Aborigine population and you'll notice that pretty easily when you get there. 

Northern Territory coat of arms