journey to japan

(Yes, that spelling is intentional. When I was little my dad lived in Korea for a year, and my mom told me I would always say “Papa in Torea!” because I couldn’t pronounce Korea. So now we’ve come full circle. :D)

I got back from Korea on Saturday night, and after a full week of traveling, sightseeing and constantly being around people, I holed up in my house and didn’t come out until Sunday evening.

Well, except to get food.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun.

I went with my friend Trevaughn who left all the organising of the trip to me. Which I didn’t mind, really. Mostly.

The actual getting to Korea takes quite a while from Kanoya. Like, more than a full day. It’s kind of crazy. Unless you take a plane, of course, but that costs more money.

First we had to drive from Kanoya. We were planning on taking the bus from Kanoya, but our other friend Joel was leaving for his trip the same night, so he drove us. We drove to the ferry terminal and then took the forty minute ferry ride across (this is not the same ferry we usually take. It’s closer to Kanoya, but the crossing is longer and you end up in the southern part of the city that’s pretty far away from anything if you don’t have a car. We then took the overnight bus to Fukuoka and arrived at six in the morning, completely not well-rested. I think next time I go to Fukuoka I’m taking the Shinkansen, even though it costs about a hundred bucks. It only takes an hour!

We spent the weekend in Fukuoka, shopping and sightseeing. I bought way too much stuff at H&M, which is my favourite store ever. And I realised that I’ve never actually been to an H&M in America…. Anyway, we took a bus around the city that stops at touristy places and we went up Fukuoka Tower, which was pretty cool, but not really that high. Well, high enough, but somewhat less impressive after having been up the Sears Tower (or whatever it’s called now). We also went to a place called RoboSquare where they had the only robots I’ve seen so far while I’ve been in Japan. And they weren’t even that advanced. It was pretty cool, though because they had a samurai robot that performed a dance thing with his sword and everything.

Fukuoka Tower

On Monday morning we headed to Hakata port to take the ferry to Busan. The ferry was not fun. We hadn’t eaten anything that morning, which ended up being a good thing because the seas were rough that day. The ferry takes three hours to get from Hakata to Busan, and I managed to sleep through some of it, but I didn’t feel great afterwards.

The exchanging of money and the finding of the train station from the port took a little longer than I had thought, so we ended up missing the train that I booked from Busan to Seoul, but we were able to get on the one that left twenty minutes later, so no harm done.

The train to Seoul took two more hours, so I had had about enough of traveling by the time we got to Seoul. We took a taxi from Seoul Station to our hostel, which ended up being a lot further away than I thought, and it wasn’t much fun dealing with a rude cab driver after traveling all day and not having eaten anything (yeah, I know, we planned that well). But we eventually did get to the hostel, which is a really nice place. It’s called Phil House, and it’s literally right around the corner from the subway station, so even though it’s not really located near anything, it’s easy to get around Seoul from there. By the way, the subway in Seoul is the best thing ever. It goes everywhere, it’s relatively fast and it’s really clean. And apparently you still get excellent cell phone reception even underground. People were on their phones ALL THE TIME. Literally. They play games, talk to their friends or watch tv. Even the older people. And almost everyone has a smart phone, too, which is a big difference to Japan. Everyone goes on about how technologically advanced Japan is, but from what I’ve seen, Seoul at least is way ahead of where I live in Japan (which, admittedly, is considered the countryside, but still. Even the bigger cities like Fukuoka seemed technologically behind Seoul).

We didn’t do anything on Monday besides find somewhere to eat because we were exhausted.

Tuesday, though, was a different story. Our friend Sarah taught English in Korea a couple years ago so she knew where to go. She told us for shopping to go to Myeong-dong, which we did. It was insane. Tons of people, tons of stores. And tons of the SAME stores. I got really confused after we saw the third Body Shop within a few blocks until we realised there were multiple locations of the same store all over the area. Really weird. I don’t know if that’s common, but I’ve never been to a place that had so many of the same stores in one location. It was a lot of fun, though. We managed to spend quite a bit of money. We also went to Lotte which is one of Seoul’s most famous department stores, but it was really high end stuff, and there were way too many people so that part wasn’t as fun.

Myeong-dong

After our adventures in shopping, we went to Seoul Tower, which was really cool. We had to take another taxi to get there, because it’s on top of a huge hill that apparently takes over an hour just to walk up. My guide book said there was a cable car, but we never found it. We got to the top around five-ish, and I wanted to wait to go up so we could see the sunset. We ended up waiting until almost seven, but it was worth it because the view was amazing. I got some really cool photos of the sunset, and it was really interesting to watch all the lights turn on in the city once it got dark.

Seoul Tower

Sunset view from the top of Seoul Tower

Seoul Tower after dark

We headed back to Myeong-dong for dinner, and had bibempa (I think that’s how you spell it), which I had never had before. We found this small restaurant off the main street, and Trevaughn had a blast because the women who worked there could speak Japanese. We so far had just nodded and bowed our way through Seoul because neither of us knows any Korean, so Trevaughn was pretty excited to talk again. I didn’t have much part in the conversation, because even though I could understand everything they were talking about, I can’t speak Japanese well enough to actually carry on an intelligible conversation. More motivation to study, I guess.

Bibempa (you know, I might be spelling that the way it’s pronounced in Japanese…)

Wednesday  was more of a culture day. We first went to Gwanghwamun Palace, which is right in the middle of downtown Seoul. It’s a huge palace complex, and we didn’t even see all of it, but it was really interesting. For me, at least. Trevaughn’s not so much into the history stuff. Inside the grounds there was a Korean folk museum as well, which I loved. It detailed Korea’s history from prehistoric times to the present, which I enjoyed because I’ve never studied Korean history before.

There were statues of the animals used in the Chinese calendar outside the Folk Museum. I was born in the year of the rabbit (although I don’t really think this looks like a rabbit…) 

There were tons of students wandering around the palace grounds as well, presumably on field trips. We were asked twice, in surprisingly good English, if we would take a photo with some girls, which I thought was kind of funny. Oh look, I took a picture with a foreigner! How cool! Oh well, maybe to them we are cool, so I guess I can’t complain. Not like it was a terrible inconvenience or anything.

After the palace we attempted to find the Bukchon Village which is an area of Seoul with a bunch of traditional house. We didn’t end up finding the houses, but we did find another palace, which I liked. Trevaughn had had enough of culture by this point, so he stayed outside and waited. I didn’t take as long in this palace because I was pretty exhausted from walking around all day, and honestly, it was really similar to Gwanghwamun Palace.

We went back to Myeong-dong for dinner and had fried chicken for dinner, which is surprisingly popular in Korea. Well, basically any kind of meat is popular. It was pretty tasty. We had one plate of regular fried chicken and another covered in sweet and sour sauce, which was awesome. It was pretty late by the time we were done with dinner, but we hadn’t been getting up particularly early, so we weren’t tired and decided to go to Dongdaemun, which was supposed to have a pretty good night market. Once we got there, we realised the market wasn’t really that great, but there were three giant shopping malls in the area that were still open.

We went in one of them, which was enough. It was huge and confusing, but lots of fun, too. Can’t say I’ve ever been shopping at 11:30 at night before. And the stores were still surprisingly crowded. I honestly don’t think Seoul is ever not crowded. It’s crazy.

We also bought omiyage here (souvenirs) for people back in Japan. I got some chocolate with chili flavour inside which honestly sounds a little scary, but hopefully my teachers will like them. If there are any extra, I may try one…

The next day Trevaughn and I split up. Trevaughn knows a woman who lives in Seoul who he tutored back in university, so he met up with her and her family for the day. I hung out with Joel and we went to the Leeum Samsung Art Museum near the Itaewon area of Seoul. A lot of it was pottery, which wasn’t too interesting in my opinion, but they also had old scrolls and metal works too. My favourite part was the special exhibit by a Korean artist comparing traditional Korean homes with homes he had lived in in America and Germany.

(ALSO: side note. Joel and I stumbled upon an On The Border, which he had never been to. Not sure if they have them in New York or not… But anyway, we went because both of us were craving Mexican food—I haven’t had any since being in Japan—and it was fabulous! Even though it cost me about $27, I didn’t even care. I got a strawberry margarita and enchiladas. YUM.)

We went to Hongdae in the evening, which is supposed to be “party central” or something like that. We didn’t do any partying really because Trevaughn and I had to get up pretty early the next morning to get our train back to Busan. It was fun, though. Lots of restaurants and young people around. It’s near one of the universities in Seoul where a lot of foreigners go, so there we plenty of waygook running around (Sarah taught me the Korean word for foreigner :D).

By the time we got to Busan on Friday, it was mid afternoon, so we didn’t do a lot. We went to the beach, which was really beautiful, and there were quite a few people swimming, even though I didn’t think it was that warm. Busan seems like a nice place, and our hostel was really cool, so it would be nice to go back there, especially since it seemed a lot calmer after Seoul.

For dinner we had Korean food one last time (yakiniku—even though they call it that in Japanese, I’m not sure if it has a different name in Korean—basically, grilled meat) and wandered around the area.

The next morning we got up ridiculously early (like 6:15, I think) to catch our ferry back to Fukuoka and then spent the entire day traveling to get back to Kanoya, which finally happened around 8 at night.

At that point I collapsed on my couch and did nothing for the rest of the weekend.

All in all, a really fun trip, but also really tiring.

And I’m kind of sad that I didn’t get to go to the DMZ, but there just wasn’t enough time. We ended up being in Seoul for only three days, so it would have been really difficult. But, Korea’s not that far away, so I could always go back. J

x Anya

i got home from korea last night. been relaxing ever since, which is nice.

i’m going to spend tomorrow editing my photos because i have an office day and there’s not much else to do.

hopefully sometime tomorrow i’ll be able to make a somewhat comprehensive post about my trip.

hope everyone’s doing well!

x anya