Just arrived in Korea
Although it's been a thoroughly good experience all things must come to an end and I've been feeling ready to move on from Japan to pastures new and so it is that I'm writing this from an internet cafe in Korea, but three hours by hydrofoil from Japan.
In the end I spent a few days in Nagasaki doing some low scale sightseeing, and after a tip I managed to get some proper R&R on an island in Nagasaki bay. For less than five pounds I got a return ferry ticket which included a ticket to the onsen (hot springs) resort on the island. Now I've not been terribly keen on this hot springs idea but it is regarded as one of those things that you have to do while in Japan, and so I did. As with the other guys in particularly I've spoken to who have spoken to who have been to an onsen, my opinion was a bit 'meh' in that it wasn't anything terribly special at all. Certainly for me it was all a bit too on the warm side to be enjoyed for any period. At least I was more or less the only person there, but taking off your glasses makes everything a blur, avoiding those situations that are otherwise uncomfortable to a prudish Brit. The highlight of the island was a modest manmade beach. Although the weather was terrible I managed to grab a good couple of hours of chilling on the beach between showesrs and although the weather was entirely overcast I still managed to miraculously catch the sun and go slightly red! Of course I didn't use any suncream because it was cloudy and raining, but it looks as if I'll really have to look out when I head towards the tropical lands where the sun can be ferocious.
After Nagasaki I had to fork out for the train back to Fukuoka as my rail pass had expired. A backpacker in the Nagasaki hostel warned me about this route as he was apparantly quite sick while on this train. Certainly it does upset the stomach a bit with lots of side-to-side moving in addition to the tilting that the train does. Fortunately I made it through with my breakfast intact though. I saw a few sights in Fukuoka although it's not a city that rates terribly highly on tourists' itineraries. To have a peek inside the Fukuoka Dome, Japan's largest, I bought a ticket for the flea market that was going on. I have to say that while the dome was reasonably impressive, Japanese flea markets (imagine a car boot sale without the cars) was rubbish. Lots of clothes from what looked like more like business sellers rather than the random and ecclectic selection of tat you'd expect at home. I was hoping that seeing what people were selling might provide something of an insight into the average Japanese family, but alas not.
Today was the day to leave all those Japanese quirks behind and see how it all compared in Korea. This morning was a bit of a rush trying to post a few things home, including my copy of the Rough Guide to Japan, the weight of which I'm happy to cast off. I have had to buy a Korea travel guide, but it's quite slim in comparison to the hefty tome that Japan necessitates. After the posting I had a dash between the post office and banks trying to get some foreign currency. I managed to get sorted with some Korean Won in the end but by which time I was cutting it short for my boat, given that I still had to pack and check out. Fortunately it came together and I got to the ferry terminal in reasonable time and away I went. Curiously there's a choice of a ferry or a hydrofoil for the oft plied route between Fukuoka and Busan. The ferry however takes 14 hours whereas the hydrofoil takes but three and is only slightly more expensive. Having felt that I've not been lacking on lengthy journeys on this trip so far I decided to take more swift mode of transport and by early afternoon I found myself in Korea's 2nd largest city and the world's fourth busiest port.
And so onto some first impressions of Korea. Although I suspect where I'm staying isn't the nicest area of town by a long way, is that it looks on the face of it rather like Japan with a somewhat reduced level of affluence in that there's less shine and a scruffier finish to the streets here. On the plus side though things do seem cheaper and the shops I've passed seem a good deal more eclectic and specialist than those in Japan, having already spied an antiques shop and music instrument shop, where in Japan the shopping seems rather much of a muchness. The taxi from the port to where I'm staying cost a little over 1 pound, food seems cheap and plentiful and internet access is around half the price of Japan too. Japanese friends told me that they can tell the difference between Japanese and Koreans just by looking at them, and indeed there is a difference although it's not something I can easily describe or put my finger on. One thing that's certainly been absent so far is a Korean equivalent of the speaky female voice that follows you more or less everywhere in Japan. Buses, vending machines, escalators all employ this same presumably diminutive lady for the nation's digitised customer service messages, but here so far there's been a resounding and it has to be said rather welcome silence, although we'll see if this is still the case once I've tried out the public transport here.
I'm not planning a great deal of sightseeing in Busan just yet. I'm planning to meet a school friend in a couple of days for one thing and there are several beaches nearby which seem that much more tempting at the moment!
In the end I spent a few days in Nagasaki doing some low scale sightseeing, and after a tip I managed to get some proper R&R on an island in Nagasaki bay. For less than five pounds I got a return ferry ticket which included a ticket to the onsen (hot springs) resort on the island. Now I've not been terribly keen on this hot springs idea but it is regarded as one of those things that you have to do while in Japan, and so I did. As with the other guys in particularly I've spoken to who have spoken to who have been to an onsen, my opinion was a bit 'meh' in that it wasn't anything terribly special at all. Certainly for me it was all a bit too on the warm side to be enjoyed for any period. At least I was more or less the only person there, but taking off your glasses makes everything a blur, avoiding those situations that are otherwise uncomfortable to a prudish Brit. The highlight of the island was a modest manmade beach. Although the weather was terrible I managed to grab a good couple of hours of chilling on the beach between showesrs and although the weather was entirely overcast I still managed to miraculously catch the sun and go slightly red! Of course I didn't use any suncream because it was cloudy and raining, but it looks as if I'll really have to look out when I head towards the tropical lands where the sun can be ferocious.
After Nagasaki I had to fork out for the train back to Fukuoka as my rail pass had expired. A backpacker in the Nagasaki hostel warned me about this route as he was apparantly quite sick while on this train. Certainly it does upset the stomach a bit with lots of side-to-side moving in addition to the tilting that the train does. Fortunately I made it through with my breakfast intact though. I saw a few sights in Fukuoka although it's not a city that rates terribly highly on tourists' itineraries. To have a peek inside the Fukuoka Dome, Japan's largest, I bought a ticket for the flea market that was going on. I have to say that while the dome was reasonably impressive, Japanese flea markets (imagine a car boot sale without the cars) was rubbish. Lots of clothes from what looked like more like business sellers rather than the random and ecclectic selection of tat you'd expect at home. I was hoping that seeing what people were selling might provide something of an insight into the average Japanese family, but alas not.
Today was the day to leave all those Japanese quirks behind and see how it all compared in Korea. This morning was a bit of a rush trying to post a few things home, including my copy of the Rough Guide to Japan, the weight of which I'm happy to cast off. I have had to buy a Korea travel guide, but it's quite slim in comparison to the hefty tome that Japan necessitates. After the posting I had a dash between the post office and banks trying to get some foreign currency. I managed to get sorted with some Korean Won in the end but by which time I was cutting it short for my boat, given that I still had to pack and check out. Fortunately it came together and I got to the ferry terminal in reasonable time and away I went. Curiously there's a choice of a ferry or a hydrofoil for the oft plied route between Fukuoka and Busan. The ferry however takes 14 hours whereas the hydrofoil takes but three and is only slightly more expensive. Having felt that I've not been lacking on lengthy journeys on this trip so far I decided to take more swift mode of transport and by early afternoon I found myself in Korea's 2nd largest city and the world's fourth busiest port.
And so onto some first impressions of Korea. Although I suspect where I'm staying isn't the nicest area of town by a long way, is that it looks on the face of it rather like Japan with a somewhat reduced level of affluence in that there's less shine and a scruffier finish to the streets here. On the plus side though things do seem cheaper and the shops I've passed seem a good deal more eclectic and specialist than those in Japan, having already spied an antiques shop and music instrument shop, where in Japan the shopping seems rather much of a muchness. The taxi from the port to where I'm staying cost a little over 1 pound, food seems cheap and plentiful and internet access is around half the price of Japan too. Japanese friends told me that they can tell the difference between Japanese and Koreans just by looking at them, and indeed there is a difference although it's not something I can easily describe or put my finger on. One thing that's certainly been absent so far is a Korean equivalent of the speaky female voice that follows you more or less everywhere in Japan. Buses, vending machines, escalators all employ this same presumably diminutive lady for the nation's digitised customer service messages, but here so far there's been a resounding and it has to be said rather welcome silence, although we'll see if this is still the case once I've tried out the public transport here.
I'm not planning a great deal of sightseeing in Busan just yet. I'm planning to meet a school friend in a couple of days for one thing and there are several beaches nearby which seem that much more tempting at the moment!
posted by Daniel at 11:56 am
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