Japan
Alright everyone.....I didn't mortally injure myself or anything, I swear. I have no excuses for not writing on here, so I won't make one up. The longer it got from my previous posts, the more daunting the task of updating seemed. It kept getting put to the backburner. I did start writing about Japan pretty soon after Japan (August 10thactually) but it never got posted. I'll post now what I had started then, and then add onto the end. In short, Japan was awesome. It's beautiful and so clean. The people are nice, travelling around it is easy. The answer to your question is yes, it is super expensive. Is it worth it though? Absolutely.
August 1-3 was my summer holidays (ya, I know, a big thank you to all those hogwan owners out there for thier generosity with their days off). Anyways, Mom and I had planned in advance that we would head to Japan on July 30th and spend my holiday in Japan. We were tight on time so limited ourselves to Southern Japan, which was just fine with me. I've seen big cities, I didn't really have much desire to head up to Tokyo, although Mt. Fuji would've been cool to see. I'm alright with missing it though, now I have reason to go back!
The morning of the 30th we headed down to Busan by train from Gumi. From Busan, S. Korea you can take a ferry (3 hours) to Fukuoka, Japan. We got down to Busan really early so we could get our tickets all figured out in case there were any glitches. All I had was a confirmation number and, well, I've been in Korea long enough to realize that things don't exactly tend to go smoothly. Imagine my surprise when it did though! I was quite pleased with the International Ferry Process, no last minute panicing at all, very smooth. So, we got our tickets figured out and headed back into Busan for the few hours before we had to actually be at the terminal. Mom had never been to Busan so we took the subway into the shopping district so she could experience Korean bootlegged goods. Ahhh Nampo-dong. I love Nampo-dong. I have far too many "North Face" t-shirts now to count. They are my unofficial school uniform, and they each cost me $10. Mom did some shopping, as did I (hey, you can never really have too many knock-off shirts) and we headed back. The ferry was pretty nice, definetly not BC Ferries. More like a airplane ride except on water. You're supposed to stay buckled into your seat the entire time and there's movies playing, if you can understand them, for your enjoyment. The seats were nice though, I tried to sleep, but I didn't.....I just kept looking out over the water. Man I miss the Ocean.
So, we arrive in Japan and immediatlely I notice the difference between Korea and Japan. Korea is dirty and stinky and gross and Japan isn't. That's all there is to it. I knew Korea was dirty, but until I arrived in Japan I hadn't realized just how accustomed to grossness I had become. Japan is immaculate. Even random back alleys are spotless. I don't even recall seeing black spots that were once spit out gum on the sidewalks (and those are everywhere, even in our precious Vancouver....come on, admit it). So, we arrive in Japan around 8pm (once we get through all the customs do-dah). We weren't staying in Fukuoka that night, our plan was to head up to Kyoto. I had booked us a hostel there for the next two nights. We had to be at the hostel for 11pm, but I figured since Japan's train system is so awesome that we'd be able to hop on a train and be on our way, no problem. We got in a cab and tore over to the Hakata train station, with grand visions of hopping on a fabulous train bound for Kyoto. Ya, well, the last train for Kyoto had already departed, so that posed a slight issue.
We were, however, informed that we could get a train into Shin-Osaka, change trains to Osaka Station and somehow magically run the 3 minutes to the next platform to catch the LAST train into Kyoto from Osaka station. Well, we definetly weren't going to make our 11pm curfew now.
There were quite a few other foreigners from S. Korea travelling to Japan on that same ferry. While waiting for our first train we met a girl, Kelly, from Pohang, S. Korea, who was also trying to get to Kyoto. Our first train ride was a little over an hour so we spent that ride trying to get ahold of our hostels to inform them that we'd be late. Thank god she had an international phone card! In the end it all worked out, it was a little stressful, but we got to Kyoto and found our hostel without much incident. We settled in for the night in our dorm room with 5 other girls.
The next morning we got up and headed out for a walk around Kyoto. There were a ton of maps in our lobby, including a pretty detailed one of the neighbourhood we were in, so we were set. Kyoto is the land of temples, there were way too many really. A person can only look at so many. We managed to hit a few, took some pics and wandered a really really, good distnace. We ended up in Gion (for those of you who've read the book "Memoirs of Geisha" you know what I'm talking about. Gion's awesome. Really pretty. Another thing I noticed about Japanese Cities is that they still look traditionally Japanese. In Korea everything is just these big block buildings with absolutely no character that no one takes care of. In Japan everything's very orderly and neat, and quite traditional. It makes for beautiful walks.
So, we walked, saw some temples, ate some sushi and had a good day. We also got introduced to the wonderful Japanese hospitality. While we were coming back down from our first temple it started to rain. We were ok with it though, cuz we were pretty hot. Anyways, we're walking, we don't have an umbrella, but we decide we should pick one up the first place we see, cuz it's raining pretty hard. As we're deciding this a van pulls up beside us and this lady gets out. She runs over to us, hands us an umbrella, smiles, and runs back to her van, gets in and drives away.
Japanese people are awesome.
So, we're happy, and we're dry. We keep walking, we walk all day. Later on, after it had stopped raining, we were in Gion wandering around the back alleys, looking for Geisha. Just our luck that we happened upon a professional photo shoot of 3 Geisha. So lucky. We had seen plenty of girls dressed in Kimono's (another big different between Korea and Japan - no one in Korea wears their traditional dress unless it's a big ceremony or something) but none of the girls had their hair or faces all done up. It was an awesome experience to see true Geishas. Apparently it rarely happens anymore, everyone we told just kept saying how lucky we were.
We take a bus back to our hostel and chill for awhile. I love staying in hostels, it's so much fun. We met people from all over the world. There was a really cool German couple, in our room there were girls from Australia, the States and, if i recall, somewhere in Europe. I spent most of the night sitting in the common lunch room, trying to make report cards, but ending up talking to two guys from Los Angelas and a Serbian Choral Conductor in Kyoto on business.
The next day we got up and headed over to the Golden Temple. It was on the other side of Kyoto so we saved it for the next day before heading onto Nara. The Golden Temple is so cool. It really is covered in gold leaf, it's so beautiful. It sits on the edge of this big pond. I took a ton of pictures and it's weird because it's just so beautiful that we actually look like we're standing in front of a green screen or something. The pictures don't look real.
We got to the train station and headed to Nara. Nara is the old capital of Japan. It's pretty small compared to most Japanese cities. I really liked Nara. Mainly because there are deer everywhere, and well, those of you who know me know that I'm a sucker for animals. Nara has this huge deer park that's inhabited by about 1,200 deer. They're really tame and they come up to you and bump into you. They definetly do NOT need to be fed by you, seriously, these deer are doing just fine and dandy. If you feed them, they'll chase you. We walked around the deer park for a bit and headed into the biggest wooden structure in the world, which houses the second biggest buddah in the world. When mom and dad were in Japan on thier honeymoon it was the biggest buddah in the world, but apparently it's since been upscaled. Anyways, it was a pretty damn big buddah.
In Nara we were staying at a traditional ryokan. This meant we were sleeping on the floor on tatami mats, eating on the floor, everything on the floor. I thought it was pretty cool, mom had other ideas, but hey, when in Rome right? The managers of the building didn't speak much, if any, English at all. We headed out after resting our feet in our ryokan to go find some dinner. Finally, after wandering back alley's of Nara for far too long, we came across a place that looked decent. Japanese food is expensive!! my god... All we wanted was sushi. I was pretty hesitant actually. I love sushi, I ate it all the time in Canada, now, here I was eating sushi in Japan. I really didn't want to eat it and realize that I'd had better sushi in Canada. That would just suck.
Ok, so that's the end of the August 10th post.....here's my quick recap of the rest.
After Nara Mom and I headed out to Osaka. We got there, took a look around and realized that yup, it was just a really big city. We've seen big cities, and since we had limited time in Japan, we decided to head to Hiroshima instead. I'm so glad we did. We only spent part of the day there, but it was enough. The memorial was really well done as was the museum. There were countless statues and other objects commemorating the Hiroshima bombing. It was pretty heavy. Got some good pictures, did a lot of walking, and headed back to Osaka.
When we got off in Osaka we wandered out of the train station to realize that we actually didn't know where we were. Osaka's huge. There are different train stations and the subway is kinda scary. It was late, dark, and we had to get up really early in order to make it back to Fukuoaka in time to catch our ferry. We were kinda grumpy. Anyways, we're standing outside definetly looking touristy when two Asian girls approach us. One of them speaks awesome English and asks us if we need help. Well, of course we do! We start talking and it turns out she's not Japanese at all, but from Hong Kong. But really, she's not from Hong Kong anymore since she's lived in Vancouver since grade 12. More specifically she's lived in Maple Ridge. She goes home to Hong Kong for the summer and was in Japan visiting her friend who's also "from" Vancouver before heading back to Canada for University. Where does she go to University you ask? Well, this would be the strange part. She goes to UCFV and is in her 3rd year in Criminal Justice. After some random screaming, we exchanged email addresses and her Japanese friend got us into a cab for a more expensive, but nonetheless uncomplicated and direct, trip to our hotel.
Alright, sorry to rush the end of our trip, but well.....ya. It was awhile ago and I have a lot more stuff to catch you all up on. In conclusion of the Japan entry. Go to Japan. It's awesome. The culture is definetly there and easy to find, the food is amazing. You'll sleep on the floor, but it's worth it. You'll wander down absolutely spotless streets and wonder how you ever thought Vancouver was clean. It's expensive, but worth every penny
posted by Krista @ 10:16 p.m.
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