Week trip to Japan

We had two options of getting to Japan: boat or plane. Plane tickets from Seoul usually run around $400-$500, depending on where you go and all the usual factors. A round-trip boat ride costs half the plane ticket, obviously takes longer, but also depends on where you go. Originally, we were thinking of landing somewhere in Japan and then taking a train to get to Tokyo -- however, amazingly, that would be more expensive than a plane ticket. Therefore, we decided on Osaka.

Or, in a more positive light, we decided on Osaka because it is the second largest city in Japan and really close to Kyoto, which is the cultural headquarters.

The ferry from Busan leaves everyday at 3PM, arriving at the destination the following day at 10AM. Because we needed to take a bus down to Busan, we had to leave Seoul around 8AM to ensure that we could make it in time. The day before we left, I needed to buy bus tickets to make sure that we could actually make it down there -- and ended up getting the 7AM bus due to the others being sold out. Factoring in the time needed to take the subway and walk to the bus station, we needed to leave Ewha at 5:45AM......so none of us slept Friday night. To add to the fatigue, I stopped drinking around midnight to sober up and make sure that I could guide us to the bus station -- but nobody else stopped that early. We arrived back to the dorms 45 minutes before we were leaving for the subway...

But, we made it successfully to the bus. I don't remember much of the ride down to Busan because I slept for nearly all of it. We made it to the ferry early and without any significant problems. The ship was really cool, at least for me, because it had stores, vending machines and a piano! Out of the 400 some passengers, there were 6 Westernerns -- our group and this guy from Hawaii. We all ended up hanging out together for most the trip, but it was pretty funny how easily we stuck out. We also met this great Korean woman that spent most of her time in Osaka with us. I don't think any of us were bothered by the boat ride -- one of our party members said she felt sick, but nothing fun came from it (I really wanted someone to get seasick so I could make fun of them).

The boat was about 3/4 Koreans and 1/4 Japanese (we made too much of a minority to count for anything). One thing that was great about this trip is the older Korean women. One would think, at least I did, that a boat ride such as this would witness the younger people being louder, drinking more and causing more mayhem. This was not the case. The loudest people on the boat, the people that drank the most, were the 40-60 year old women. Walking down the hallways, I could hear boisterous singing and clapping trumpeting through the thick doors. When the women wanted to talk to one another, their voices were only decibels below concert level...and waking up at 5AM to hear two yelling down the halls also put me in a sour mood. I mean, wow, how different than what I was used to.

We arrived in Japan the next morning with the world at our fingertips. Let me revise that -- we didn't speak Japanese and didn't have the slightest idea of where we were going. Luckily, one of the responsible party members booked a hostel for us to stay in and she also wrote down directions on how to get there -- quite contrary to my idea of walking around until we found a cheap place. We boarded the subway and started our trip to the hostel.

This hostel was tailored for international travelers. Two staff members were Japanese and the other 3 or so were international. The place was insanely cheap, only about $15 a night, which is possibly the cheapest place in all Japan. It also wasn't that bad, quality wise. We felt safe, left our valuables in our unlocked room for the whole day, and felt confident nobody would try to harm us.

The hostel did have a weird policy of shutting down between 12PM and 5PM for maintenance -- everyday. That wasn't too much of a problem because we didn't want to spend our day at the hostel, but made checking in a little harder. We had to drop our bags at the front desk and then leave. Our first stop was Osaka Castle.

Osaka Castle was a really cool place to visit. It has been around for 600 some years, so it has served 100 different functions based on the governing authority. I found the funniest part of this whole experience was how often the buildings burned down. Like a museum, each building had an explanation on the purpose and reconstruction to the origional form...and how it was rebuilt after burning down. The only building that didn't burn down was the treasury -- but that was destroyed in a war. My conclusion on Osaka Castle -- the guards were incompitent and accidently burned down the castle every 100 years. Seriouslly, it didn't say things like "this armory was destroyed in a war," it just said "the armory burned down in 1740." I was laughing too hard to breathe by the time I had read that 8 times.

We finished our day in Osaka by trying to find a bar. We were used to places like Korea, where bars are more common than restaurants (probably an exaggeration, but I am not 100% sure). In Japan, we were thinking that bars would be somewhat easy to find -- but surprisingly, we found that every business that would have been a bar in Korea was replaced by a sex shop (no exaggeration). It was astounding to see that the bright lights with beer mugs were quickly replaced with scantily clad women (if not naked) pictures on the door. Maybe it was just the area we were in...

Japan is possibly the most expensive place I have ever seen (although that isn't too big of a list). I spent the whole trip hungry because I couldn't justify spending $14 on dinner with only a small possibility of being filled. A meal that would cost about $3 in the U.S. would be about $8 in Japan, but with less food. The challenge of being unable to successfully ask if something had meat also severely limited my comfort and food choices. At the end of the night, we randomly met up with the other Westerner from the boat ride. It was dumb luck that he saw us when he did. That was our Sunday.

Monday was a day to explore Osaka. I was woken up around 9AM to the Korean woman calling our hostel with the hopes of spending the day with us. We planned to meet at a subway at 11AM, but we chose the busiest and biggest subway in all of Osaka. We couldn't find her, started asking for directions to get to her hotel, got to her hotel an hour after we were set to meet, found she was gone, and started the long trip back to the hostel to get the rest of our group. Oh, so me and the other guy went to meet her and left the three women at the hostel. We figured they would be pissed at us for taking so long and then they would be kicked out of the hostel for maintenance.

We got back to see that the Korean woman was with the other girls, just leaving the hostel. We felt pretty lucky to meet them when we did. We walked around the shopping areas in Osaka for the afternoon, grabbed lunch, and then were going to a Cherry-Blossom festival. The festival was interesting in that there were hundreds of Japanese people and a couple dozen foreigners walking slowly down a dimly lit path, taking pictures of the trees and in front of the trees. It took us a solid hour to make it 200 yards. Afterwards, there was a carnival-like event going on in a nearby park.

I call it a carnival because they had games, prizes, candy and so forth. But the prizes were not giant teddy bears or stuffed animals, but video game systems like Wii's and Playstation 3's, Airsoft guns, anime and pornography...it was very interesting...

On Tuesday, we went to Kyoto. We took the subway -- or maybe it was more like a train -- for about 45 minutes to arrive in central Kyoto. We didn't have any specific plans, but just wanted to see what we could see that was traditional. The Korean woman was also with us for Kyoto.

The first place we went was the Golden Temple. I don't think there were many signs in English, which made it harder to understand the significance of the place. It was beautiful, though. They also had this great idea of putting a small shrine with a bowl in the middle -- which led to people throwing coins to try to score it inside the bowl. There must have been a solid $100 at each shrine.

On that note, I hate Japanese currency. They have three bills that I've seen -- the 1000 Yen, 5000 Yen and 10000 Yen. The 1000 Yen is worth about $10, 5000 Yen is about $50, and $100 is the 10000 Yen bill. For all the rest, they only use coins. I hate change and people that have spent time with me when I bought food will attest that I hate change. Therefore, when I bought something worth 200 Yen with a 1000 Yen bill and received only coins back, I was pissed. I hate coins, but I had to keep these because 500 Yen is actually worth something.

We also got to see Geishas! I was reading a Lonely Planet book on Japan and the synopsis on the back made special mention of seeing three Geishas, so I am pretty stoked that we got to see some. Pictures below. They didn't seem very happy posing for the group that quickly swarmed them.

Japanese people are also very helpful to foreigners. We split up near the end of the day with half of us going to a Manga museum (Japanese comics) and the other half trying to find a traditional tea house. I went to the Manga museum because I promised the Korean woman earlier that I would go with her, despite my later hesitance, it was pretty cool. We didn't fully understand the bus routes, but we figured if we could make it to one stop, then we would be fine. As we ran to a bus station, we asked this guy that was getting into his car if we were at the right station. He said no and directed us to the correct place. We found it and started waiting. About 10 minutes later, he drove back to us and offered us a ride to our destination. He even said he would give us some Japanese candy...okay, the second part was a lie, but I would have been happier if he had given us candy. I mean, how cool is that to get rides from strangers?

We finished the night at a Karaoke Bar. The first song: Mr. Roboto...the song that taught us half of all the Japanese we know...

Wednesday witnessed us going to an art museum. There was an American we met at the hostel from Colorado that ended up joining us. Visiting back to the kindness of Japanese people to foreigners, we were trying to figure out how much it costs to get into the art museum due to the confusion of posting 10 different prices. Eventually, this older man saw us and had us follow him. He gave us all free tickets. It was pretty cool.

After the art museum, our group split up: four were going to an aquarium, one to a ceramics museum, and me. I didn't really want to go to the ceramics museum and the aquarium was too expensive. I ended up walking around Osaka and found myself, somehow, in another red light district. Maybe I am being presumptuous, but I have somehow stumbled to find more prostitutes in two days in Japan than the rest of my life combined.

We had some time on Thursday to shop a little. I saved my money for Thursday because I felt I would run out of money for food if I didn't. I quickly ran around and spent 2000 Yen, headed back to the hostel and gathered up to go back to Korea.

The only thing worth mentioning about the trip back was what one person in the group wanted us to be the "crazy alcoholic foreigners." When we boarded the boat, we wanted to celebrate with a beer -- as if saying goodbye to Japan. Time of first drink: 2PM.

Two hours later, we were playing cards and decided to finish the beer off. Time of second drink: 4PM.

Around 5:30, I decided I needed a nap. When I woke up at 7:50PM, I walked to the lobby to see the rest of the group playing a makeshift board game. They even had dice made out of paper. They also all had a beer in the lobby. Time of third drink: (probably) 7PM.

The boat offered entertainment from like 8:30 to 10PM. Following the really awesome show (the one from Busan to Osaka was a little boring), we all chipped in for bottles of whiskey and coke. Time of fourth drink: 10PM.

We sat down in the lobby and got ready to pour our glasses when one of the crew members gently suggested we go someplace else to drink our hard alcohol. I think it is really funny that most people on the boat saw us drinking from 2PM to 1AM and assumed we were alcoholics. But we were MUCH more sober than the older women, yelling, singing and clapping from their rooms.



This was the digital map that tracked our journey from Busan to Osaka. Once we got inside the islands of Japan, we could see the illuminated coastline.













Osaka Castle. Take notice of the trees that we can see -- the only thing that I can think of that Osaka has over Seoul. Seoul has no trees.












This was a market in Japan. It was more like an outside mall, but it had a roof. It was pretty cool.













When we got off the boat, we needed an ATM because nobody had any Yen. We walked into a convenience store that had "ATM" and some Japanese posted outside. As we withdrew money, we walked around to find this section. Oddly, the majority of these magazines are not pornography, but instead Manga. The old statement that "sex sells" rings so true here -- literally, inside one of these magazines, there are no pictures of women. All that is inside the majority of these is comics.






Golden Temple in Kyoto.














The Imperial Palace. We couldn't go inside because we were too late for the tour. They also had a bunch of weird rules like "There is no age limit for entering the Kyoto Imperial Palace, but a man below 18 years old should be accompanied by an adult." I think that means that women under 18 were fine to enter...









The nice couple that drove us from the bus stop to the central terminal.













Three Geishas that we saw. The person that is half cut off on the right was posing with them. They did not look very happy with the huge swarm of people that came to take pictures. We saw one earlier that was running down the street with people chasing after her, asking her to stop for a picture. Thankfully, foreigners made a minority of the people that were taking pictures and chasing these women.







I dare you not to buy a drink that looks like that.














Many bathrooms in Japan have the stalls numbered. They also provide these handy maps, just in case you get lost.












Our Japanese teacher...















Cherry blossoms in Osaka. The lighting was hard to get, but wow, these look beautiful.