Korea

Planning my promised visit to China was exhausting. Trying to research and put together the cheapest ways to get around, the locations of all my friends, the places to stay, and the amount of time I would need to wrap things up in Japan took about a month. And of course, I couldn't book anything until I knew everything would work together. As such, it got annoying when people would say to me close to my departure date "You should have planned ahead." Doubling as a student and a travel agent isn't easy when simply being a foreigner adds dozens of other responsibilities you have to deal with, many of which require that you learn a whole new set of vocabulary or process just to learn how to deal with them. The problem with being a foreigner is you even have to learn how to learn; in other words you have to find out how to find information sources that tell you how to find what you need to find. Simply put, if you have a lot to accomplish while living abroad, it is a real struggle to be as efficient as you'd like.

In any case, the trip only happened in limited capacity. Three of my friends booked round trip plane tickets to Seoul, but I wanted to continue on from Korea to China. One way plane tickets are not nearly as economical as round-trip, so I opted for one-way ferry tickets instead. Using the 日韓共同切符, I traveled by 新幹線 across western Japan to the port in 下関. From there, I caught a ferry to 釜山, Korea to catch a KTX train to Seoul. I would have taken my time en route (taking full advantage of the ticket price), stopping along the way to see more of Japan, except we had already bought tickets to a soccer game soon after my arrival in Seoul.

People in western Japan were a lot friendlier than the people of Nagoya. Granted, I met plenty of friendly people in Nagoya, and the Nagoya society as a whole tries to be "nice", but there are so many subtleties in social interaction that simply aren't present in Nagoya. I had dismissed these differences between Nagoya people and Americans as simply part of Japanese culture, but traveling west made me realize how much diversity there is just within the main island. The travelers I met there from Tokyo were also extremely friendly, but travelers tend to be more outgoing.

The ferry was an amazing experience. It wasn't booked anywhere close to capacity, which was nice considering the room I booked had 40 futons in it. Watching the cities go by, socializing with the other travelers, even enjoying the on-boat カラオケ and 温泉 all make for an experience that you completely forfeit when traveling by plane. I have to say I was a little confused when a Korean woman tried to convey (completely in Korean) that I should call the emergency staff because she thought the boat was sinking. It wasn't until somebody else spoke with her that she accepted that a little puddle of water in the observation deck didn't mean the boat had "sprung a leak".

Korean people were everything I wished Japanese people had been at times. I don't mean this as an insult to the Japanese, but I didn't realize how bad my culture shock in Japan had been until realizing how much Korea felt more like home in terms of friendliness. I spoke with some Koreans on my return trip about my thoughts, and we finally concluded that Koreans aren't as "nice" as Japanese, but they are more honest with their feelings. In Japan, this "nice" factor is a result of strict adherence to social roles. As an American, I'm used to everybody in my generation trying to break away from social roles.

Seoul was nice. At this point in writing this entry, that's all I can say. Blame the headache.

The trouble started when I realized I couldn't book a ferry to China from Incheon as expected. And when my 3 travel buddies returned to Japan, I was left without a hotel for the night. I managed to book a ferry to 大阪, Japan for the next day, but I still needed a place to stay the night. My solution? Nightclub. Pretty impressive place. Best layout I've ever seen. Of course I stick out as a foreigner, but that can't be avoided. At least people were friendly and had a good time.

The return ferry only cost me 8000 yen, and took 18 hours. But again, I have to say it was my favorite way to travel. Maybe ferry people are just more engaging than plane and train people. Maybe it's just because you can walk around freely, so long as you can stay standing when the boat docks. Walking down the hallway, I probably looked drunk, swaying from side to side.

Osaka was scary. I traveled around with a guy I met from the boat who pretty much only spoke Korean, gathering that he was studying architecture and needed my help to ask where to find interesting buildings. The scary part comes when I looked for a place to stay for the night. Capsule hotel? All night in a club? Some stranger's apartment? I won't say exactly what happened, only that gangsters with girls wearing cowboy outfits were involved.