I know it seems early for me to have already had a one-week vacation, but it's all thanks to Chuseok! Also known as Korean Thanksgiving. It conveniently arrived 3 weeks into my teaching career, so I'm now accustomed to a "work 3 weeks, one week off" schedule. The purpose of Chuseok is to give thanks for one's ancestors, so everyone usually gets together with their families around the whole country. It was therefore the perfect time for 4 of my friends and I to head to Japan!
We travelled to Japan by ferry, which was surprisingly only 3 hours! Despite my expertise in geography, I definitely hadn't realized just how close the two countries are. The journey started with a bus ride to Busan (a big city on the east coast), where we spent the night, 5 of us in one Love Motel room (I'll get into Love Motels in a later post).
The high speed ferry was great. Airplane-style seating, mandatory buckled seat belt the entire time, food carts and as I said only 3 hours!
We landed in Fukuoka, a pretty big city in southwest Japan, but we wanted to start our trip up north and work our way back down in order to catch the ferry back to Korea 5 days later.
We tok the famous Shinkansen Nozomi, fastest train in Japan and called the BULLET train. 300 km/hour! We got halfway across Japan in less than 2 1/2 hours.
We arrived in Osaka late on Day 1 and checked into our awesome hostel, which was owned by a great Japanese couple and their 9-month old baby! We headed downtown called Dotonbori to grab some dinner and scope out the scene...
Downtown Osaka is really cool--even on a Tuesday night it was bustling with people, many of whom were drinking in the street, and full of restaurants, shops, and bars!
Day 2: We got an early start in the morning as this would be our only full day in Osaka. We started out at what many consider the main tourist attraction, Osaka Castle, which is surrounded by a huge and beautiful park.
I really liked this old man and little boy on a bike..
This isn't the castle! Just a shrine that we could see from across one of the two moats surrounding the castle.
There it is!
This castle, like many of the things we saw in Osaka, was actually a replica of the original from the 16th century. Built in the mid-1900s, this one now serves as a museum giving info on the history of the castle and its inhabitants. It wasn't especially cool, but there was a great view from the top!
We next headed to the Japan National Mint Museum, where we learned the history of how Japanese money came to be. We followed it up with some tradition Japanese udon noodles!
After that we went to the Osaka Human Rights Museum, which was one of the coolest museums I've ever been to. And if it hadn't been in almost all Japanese, I'm sure it would have been even cooler. It had a bunch of different sections that each focused on one minority group in Japan, including women, Korean immigrants, homosexuals, mentally disabled and many more. Quite progressive for Japan.
After the museum we went over to the bay area district, where the highlight was clearly the "World's Largest Giant Ferris Wheel!" Actually the world's largest? Who knows. But we did ride it, and got a great view of Osaka!
One thing we discovered about Japan: SUSHI is not as common as you would think. We spent all day searching for it, and finally asked some old ladies on the street who pointed one out to us that had 3 choices of sushi: cucumber roll, tuna roll, and the craziest assortment of sashimi for 5 times the price.
I ate it all except for the scary-looking octopus tentacle.
Day 3 (yes that was all from Day 2): Exhausted from the day before, and awaking at 8am only to be met with a huge thunderstorm, we decided to sleep in for about half the day...then headed to Kyoto in the afternoon! Kyoto is only about 30 minutes away by train, and known as the "cultural capital" of Japan.
Our first stop was the Kinkaku-ji temple, knows as the Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
Very beautiful, albeit touristy. I believe it's still used as a Zen Buddhist Temple, and is now one of the 17 World Heritage Sights in Kyoto! And they reminded us of that fact often.
We also saw the Kyoto Imperial Palace that afternoon. And for dinner, I got to meet up with Kate, my good friend Anna Pitoniak's mom!
She was nice enough to treat my friends and me to dinner, and it was great to see a connection with my home world for the first time in a while.
Day 4: We took the Shinkansen train to Hiroshima, which was definitely my favorite city of all that we saw in Japan. Most of it is dedicated to a peace movement focused on ridding the world of nuclear weapons. The Peace Memorial Museum was one of the best I've ever been too--it had everything: history, science, culture, politics, philanthropy... This was one of my favorites: a recreation of exactly where the A-bomb went off and of the destruction of the city right after.
The museum also contained a ton of images and artifacts from the time around the bombing that were really moving, like a little girl's tricycle, accompanied by the story of how she died:
However the whole point of the museum as well as the surrounding Peace Memorial Park is to remember the past while giving hope for the future. It was definitely one of the more beautiful places I've been in my life.
I'll wrap this up...we had a great dinner and night out in Hiroshima that night. We met up with some of our new friends and of course made some new ever-friendly Japanese friends!
But oh! I have to include a photo of the Hiroshima speciality, Okinomoyaki. Don't ask me what's in it, but it was delicious.
Day 5: We jumped on the train back to Fukuoka, where we rested for the afternoon, ate some delicious ramen, then hit up an Onsen, or hot spring. It was basically a giant spa: massages, mandatory nudity in the hot pools (separated men and women, of course), saunas, and more! An unfamiliar yet worthwhile experience, for sure.
On Day 6, we grabbed the ferry back to Fukuoka, and then got immediately back into the daily grind of teaching!
Overall observations on Japan:
-more expensive than Korea...than ANYWHERE
-everyone is willing to help you. If you pull out a map, someone will shout from their bike "are you lost!?" as they ride by
-food is delicious
-much more tourist-friendly than Korea (which is good and bad)
-Lawson Station = (lesser) equivalent of MiniStop
-overall, awesome!
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