Day 8 Korea / Day 1 Japan
Today I make for the land of the rising sun. Woo!
Up NICE AND EARLY to check out of the hostel. I was not as quiet as I could have been just to try and wake up the latecomers. #dickmove
I decided early on that I was going to try to get as few planes as possible through the trip where timeframes are realistic. So today I'm getting the ferry from Busan (Korean) to Fukuoka (Japan). The ferry is a hydrofoil (google it) and it takes about 3.5 hours to cross. To me this seems like a much better idea than having to go to the airport.
The ferry terminal was easy to find and the check-in process was painless although the Japanese lady did need to see evidence that I was planning to actually leave Japan. I was a little worried for a second and thought that maybe I did need to get a Visa. All good though.
I decided to buy a seasick tablet from the pharmacist at the ferry station just in case but I needn't have worried. There was no wind so the ride was extremely smooth the whole way.
The ferry itself was pretty good. Clean, plenty of room, comfortable seats.
Busan was quite a nice port to leave. It was a nice day and the port is very scenic. A nice bridge, mountains and forest and nice clean water.
Some thoughts on Korea since I'm leaving.
Like China I only really went to Korea because I had some time to kill before one of the major stops on my trip. I didn't really have any idea what to expect or anything I particularly wanted to do.
It's a really nice country but honestly it could be anywhere in Asia as far as I'm concerned. From a history and sightseeing perspective they have a lot of interesting stuff to see but it's not really that different to China or Thailand.
Seoul was a fun city but it was just a major city. It could be Bangkok, Tokyo or Shanghai and I'm not sure I would be able to tell the difference.
Busan was just a small beach city. It could be the Gold Coast or Honolulu.
Scenery - beautiful. After the vast vast expanses in Mongolia the tropical forests and mountain ranges of Korea were absolutely gorgeous. The shades of green in Korea were a lot deeper and darker than the grassland in Mongolia and it was pretty stunning.
Food - amazing. I've always enjoyed Korean food but staying here for a week has just cemented that for me. The flavours, the variety, the presentation were all just excellent.
People - really friendly. All the Koreans I met were really friendly. I have to say though ... the Koreans are the most vain people I've ever seen. I think everyone under 30 would take a selfie or check their camera every few minutes to make sure their hair was still perfect or their makeup still done.
Weather - don't come in summer unless you love HOT and HUMID. It was so uncomfortable the whole time I was here. You do really appreciate air conditioning though.
KONICHIWA!
Welcome to Japan mofo!
I've always wanted to visit Japan. The perception I have of this country is a reserved / non-demonstrative people but with a real depth of feeling, an orderly polite society, really interesting history, ultra-modern and amazing food.
Let's see how it goes!
So I arrived in Fukuoka and went through the customs stuff. Quick and easy.
Changed some money, got a map, hit a vending machine and then off to the train station.
I tried to get a SIM card here but the ferry station only sold 7 day SIMs which clearly wasn't enough. I'll try elsewhere.
My first stop in Japan was going to be in Kumamoto on the southern island of Kyushu. I really wanted to see the Kumamoto castle and the volcano at Mount Aso. So I disembarked at Fukuoka and got the bus to the train station.
As I was walking in I got ambushed by a local television crew for a TV interview! I had a quick chat to the Producer and basically this local TV station has a segment where they go interview a tourist then follow the around Fukuoka for a while no doubt trying to find some hilarious tourist shit to show the locals.
So I start to do the interview and they were quite amused when they found out I had only been in Japan for about 30 minutes but they were a bit disappointed when I told them I was only commuting through Fukuoka to somewhere else and didn't really have anything I had planned to do here. At that point they stop rolling and the 2 interviewers start to have a chat while I talk to the Producer. After about 10 minutes they are still talking to each other and nobody seems to know what's going on so I said goodbye and went to figure out how to catch a train. They seemed surprised I was leaving but whatever.
In hindsight given the bust Kumamoto would turn out to be I wish I had hung around and got them to suggest something for me to do. If anyone ever sees me on YouTube sing out and I'll see how bad a job I did.
In the station I found the place to cash in my JR Pass voucher for my 21 days of unlimited train travel. I'm not exactly sure which pass I ended up with (there are different train companies apparently) so I hope it doesn't cause me any problems later. The pass was a tedious process as I had to stand in queue for about 30 minutes to get it and get my first ticket to Kumamoto.
The station itself is almost exactly what I expected of a big Japanese station. Huge, modern, clean and very very organised. There are signs everywhere in English and it's going to be very easy to get around.
I got my very first Japanese bullet train! The carriages are very comfortable but I'm extremely surprised there is no wifi or USB ports on the train. They do have power outlets so you can charge your device if you remember to bring your charger but given the distances people travel on trains here I would have thought at least every Shinkansen train would definitely have wifi. This could prove annoying as I had planned to do a lot of my bookings, blog updates and travel research while on the train.
I arrived at Kumamoto without incident. The scenery we want past is a lot like Korea. Tropical forest and plenty of mountains with civilisation everywhere. There is not a lot of unused land here.
The Kumamoto station is pretty small and the tourist desk tells me I can't get a SIM card at the station so the lady points me to a place in town where she thinks I can get one. I find it eventually but the SIM plans are pretty bad there. I end up with a 15 day plan where I get 250mb of data per day. It's probably enough but we'll see how I go. Hopefully I can find a better one for the remaining 2 weeks when this runs out.
I had some time before I could check into my hostel and conveniently there was a nice beer hall nearby so I stopped in and had a couple of local Kumamoto craft beers. Wheat beer and a pale ale I think. They were OK but certainly not memorable.
Now one of the reasons I went to Kumamoto first was because I wanted to see the Kumamoto Castle. I'd been reading a bit about it and it was supposedly better and less touristy than the other major castles in Japan. However - the TV producer in Fukuoka mentioned that the castle was closed due to an earthquake in 2016. They were still rebuilding or repairing it and guest weren't allowed in.
So after my beers I went past the castle fence and there was the top of the castle above the trees covered in scaffolding. Shit.
Got to the hostel and checked in. I thought I had booked a bed in a dorm room but it turns out I have a Japanese style room to myself. Cool! Good job James!
So it's got the sliding wooden doors / windows with paper over the slats, a wall with a nice mural on it, tatami mats on the floor and a futon folded up in the corner. And an air-conditioner ... they're not savages after all. I wasn't worried about the tatami ... I'd been camping in Mongolia and basically been sleeping on the ground (my sleeping mat had a leak so it wouldn't stay inflated) and there was a futon here!
The Japanese guy who checked me in spoke good English. Apparently he'd spent a few years working in Australia before he had to come home for family reasons. The hostel is pretty quiet and about a 15 minute walk from anything interesting but that's fine.
So now that I've got wifi again I looked up the castle. It seems I didn't check the actual website of the castle among all the other reading I was doing. It was indeed closed and all you could access were some of the grounds. Not what I had in mind. At least I wasn't the only one. Met 2 other people in the hostel that night with the same issue. I also checked the volcano and they were not allowing visitors to the crater for Mount Aso due to seismic activity. Both of these things had been closed for months. #planningfail
Since my careful planning (...) had been ruined I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what to do the following day. I decided on a trip to Nagasake to look at the Atomic Bomb stuff there and do some other touristy stuff. Not the cheeriest start to the trip but something I was interested in.
After that I had a bit of a chat with a Korean guy in the hostel. Turns out I was staying around the corner from where he lives in Busan. He's got 5 days planned in Kumamoto. Without the 2 major attractions I couldn't even find enough to interest me for a whole day so I don't know how he's going to go.
Dinner was a ramen place called Red Team Ramen. Pokemon reference? Apparently Kumamoto ramen is a big thing so I had to try it. It was really delicious. The depth and richness of the pork bone soup was just amazing and the rest of it was great too. I do think the chashu pork was better at Tuno in Adelaide though. As Droz said I need to learn to say "a Chinese dude in Australia makes better ramen than you".
Back to the hostel to setup my futon and get some sleep.
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