far, far away

Just pretend it happened this week..

Ya...so this is several days late...just read the title if that bothers you, heh. So, let's see...

Last weekend Aaron came out to the Osaka area for the JET re-contracting conference. He to stay with me on Friday night. He got here around 9 and we soon made our way to the local watering hole. To make a long night short, we spent a lot of money, got really drunk and ended up with the owner and some regular at our table.

The whole time we were there I was really craving some ramen. Unfortunately the ramen stand was closed when we walked by at 3am. I took out my anger on my umbrella and some high school kid making out with his girlfriend on a street corner (what's a kid doing out that late anyway...he was asking for it).

Look, the point is, when you want to travel into Kyoto and hike in the mountains the next day its not a good idea to get stupid drunk the night before. Despite doing this, we somehow made it into Kyoto by 2. We went to Fushimi Inari Shrine. It was quite worth the trip. Check out the pictures.

That night we had dinner with Aaron's old host family. They were quite nice and the two little girls were absolutely adorable. It's always fun to get invited into someones house in Japan. It doesn't happen all that often.

All Quiet

I guess you've noticed not much is going on lately. Well....let's see...Oh, I called out of work yesterday, that was pretty fun. Who doesn't like calling out of work? I sent money home and was quite happy with an exchange rate that has moved 8 yen in my favor since I last sent money home. That's only about 8 cents, but on 120,000 yen, it adds up.

My friend Aaron is in Kobe this week for the JET conference. We're going to head to Kyoto on Saturday and bring my host brother. I figure a bilingual 8-year old has got to be good for something. We're going to have dinner with Aaron's host family that night. Should be fun. I've never met his old host family before.

That's about it...I'll try to do something more interesting in the near future...

Earthquake- Not cool

While I have felt slight tremors in Japan, I've never been in what many people would call an earthquake, until last night. Now, it wasn't that strong, something like a 4.4 from what I'm told, but it was plenty strong enough for me. I'm not even sure when at night it happened, but it definitely woke me up fairly violently. I knew right away what was happening, but I was still sort of paralyzed. Nothing was really rattling, but at the same time there was this strange sort of grumble coming from all around. It scared the heck out of me and it took quite a while to get back to sleep after that.

Talking to my co-workers didn't really help to calm my fears. They were all talking about how the big one is inevitable, which is true. Tokyo, for example, get a major earthquake every 50 years or so. The last one was in the 1930s...it is waaaaaay over due. In this region of Japan there was a major quake just a few years ago, but that's not a guarantee of another coming anytime.

I think that's the worst part. It's one of the few (only?) major disasters that gives absolutely no warning whatsoever. It just happens. Day or night. There's no time to evacuate, no time to prepare.

I just hope that's the last earthquake I'm in.

Last Word on Korea

Alrighty, my Korea pictures and Tsushima pictures are now up. My friend, Aaron, also put his Golden Week pictures up.

One last thing about South Korea...they had two 24-hour (as far as we could tell) video game channels...one solely devoted to Starcraft...crazy, huh?

Back to work tomorrow...bleh. Less than 3 months to go and I've still got an adventure or two left in me. More on that later.

Korea, Kyuushu, and Tsushima

Alright, I survived my Saturday workday and spent the afternoon with my old host family. So, let's talk about my trip.

The first night was really just a ton of travel time. I got on the Shinkansen (bullet train) at about 8:00 and headed west to Hakata in Fukuoka. I hung out at the station and walked around for a little while and then headed for the ferry port. Got there, bought my ticket to Tsushima and walked around until midnight.

Tsushima is the last stop in Japan before you hit Korea. It's fairly large, it took about 2 hours to drive from tip to tip. The ferry ride there wasn't bad...but I wouldn't recommend taking a 5 hour ferry ride anywhere. I got a little sleep, but not was still pretty beat when Aaron picked me up at the port in Tsushima.

Aaron showed me around Tsushima for a few days. It was a really different side of Japan. Much smaller, obviously, than what I'm used to. I got to see an endangered cat called the yamaneko (mountain cat). It was pretty much like a house cat, but with a bigger tail and seemingly lazier.

On Monday we finally made our way to Pusan, South Korea. It's pretty safe to safe we were both a little worried about the trip. We needed to get from Tsushima to Pusan and then up to Seoul in just a few hours.

The ferry ride was interesting, Koreans doing shots of whiskey on any sort of ride will do that. Got to Pusan a little late, but we were able to get tickets for the KTX (sort of like Japan's bullet train, just as nice and just as fast, just a little smaller) up to Seoul. We were much relieved. Hopped on the KTX and we were on our way to Seoul.

Got to Seoul, figured out the subway and made it to our hotel. We were both sort of in a daze and didn't find it strange that as we walked in a key was simply handed to us at the front desk. Went up to the room, walked in, saw someones clothes and luggage strewn about the room and promptly left. Remember...one must always check in to a hotel. Got that all fixed and we were back in business.

Seoul was really just a fantastic city. It was quite clean and simple to get around on the subway. It had a much different feel than Japan. We saw two former palaces, a folk museum, went up the Seoul Tower, and got to see the Korean War memorial, which was truly impressive.  Great time in Seoul.

We made our way back to Pusan on Thursday. No problems there. Our hotel in Pusan was a ways out from the down town area, but it was right on the beach in a sort of touristy area. It felt a lot like being at home.

We didn't have much time in Pusan, but we did make it to this temple in the northern part of the city. I don't know what was going on, but it was obviously some sort of holiday or festival. The whole temple was completely canvased by these large colorful lanterns with pieces of paper attached that had names (i think) on them. It was really beautiful.

The next day we walked around the beach that morning and then made our way back to the port. Aaron and I took different boats back, so we parted ways at the port terminal, though not before meeting some weirdo from Florida, who, unfortunately, was on my boat back to Fukuoka.

Aaron's boat was late. Mine was this scary looking "hydro-foil." It was powered by a jet engine. It takes a normal ferry about 9 hours to do Fukuoka in Japan to Pusan in South Korea. This thing did it in under 3. For all the speed it was an incredibly smooth ride. Thank god.

Fukuoka to Shin-Osaka. Shin-Osaka to home.

I'll stop writing now. Pictures will be up soon.

Korea=Awesome

Kyuushu, Tsushima, and Korea (well, at least Seoul and Pusan) were awesome. I'm exhausted and must work tomorrow...yes, tomorrow is Saturday...don't even ask...

I'll write more later.