Japan

In celebration of completing an entire year of having a semi-real job, I rewarded myself with a quick trip over to Japan before heading home on August 9th. (aka in like 2 days!?!)

To be honest, Japan was not my first choice of travel destinations when I first began planning this trip of mine. Wanting to stay in Asia for obvious financial reasons, I was struck by a remarkable lack of places that would be safe for me to visit due to political unrest, recent bouts of terrorist activities, visa challenges, and so on. I suppose even Japan has that whole radiation thing, but given a lack of other options, I went with Japan and stayed as far away from Sendai as possible. Turns out it was actually a wonderful vacation!

As I'd expected, Japan was strikingly similar to Korea in a number of ways. I started my Japan traveling in Tokyo (not To-keeee-yo, as I've heard it called all my life), the biggest city in the world. While definitely a cool place to visit, I think my having spent the past twelve months in Seoul, another Asian metropolis probably desensitized me to the whole wow factor of the city... 

Cool architecture, bustling city, fun vibe, and delicious sushi. Win :)

After Tokyo, I headed out west to hike Mt. Fuji. As you know, I've been getting more into hiking in the past couple months, but Mt Fuji was a whole 'nother challenge completely. First and foremost, this mountain is nearly 4x taller than anything I've ever tried climbing before, the top reaching a height of 3776 meters. That's nearly two and a half miles straight up in the air, a little under half of Mt. Everest. I think some airplanes fly at this altitude. Clearly, I had no idea what I was getting myself into...

The whole hike up was surreal. I did a night hike so I started trekking at about 10pm, climbed all through the night, and reached the top just in time for sunrise. Which happened to look like this. Kind of beautiful. 

The whole way up however was pitch black except for the glowing trail of fellow hikers snaking up the mountain. Every now and then, you would look down and realize the stunning clear view of the Kansai region you'd had a moment before was completely blocked by the encroaching layer of clouds. Very, very cool experience!

What I realized along the trail, however, was that climbing Mt. Fuji was not just about the bragging rights and bucket list check mark, it's about the people on the journey with you, the hundreds of other lights illuminating the trail surrounding you. Early on, I started following two Japanese guys to make sure I was headed the right direction out of the parking lot. Maybe fifteen minutes later, they'd noticed my following them and offered me a pair of gloves to wear since the top of the mountain was extremely, extremely cold. We ended up being hiking buddies all the way up the mountain, all without their speaking a word of English besides "ok." Suffering from the combination of exhaustion with a touch of altitude sickness, I would not have made it if not for these two :)

After my twelve-hour hiking ordeal (that was so cool, but will never, ever be happening again!), I headed down to the mountain to sleep, shower, and gorge on Japanese food in the lovely little town of Kawaguchi-ko. After a day of hard-earned relaxation, off I headed to Kyoto...

Infamous Japanese bullet trains, the Shinkansen.

Now Kyoto has got to be the most charming city I've ever seen. The main streets look just like every other city I've ever seen, but a simple turn onto the right alley took you straight to the Memoirs of a Geisha back alleys you'd expect from Japan. Just lovely.

I spent a full two days in Kyoto, wandering the charming cobbled streets of Higashiyama, geisha spotting in Gion, and meandering through the garden lined alleys in Arashiyama. It was impossible to take a bad picture, every street seemed more gorgeous than the last. By the end, I was actually starting to feel overwhelmed by the number of temples and beautiful things, and headed off to Osaka. 

Now, since my departure flight was out of Osaka, I assumed I would be able to occupy myself there for the remaining two days of my trip. Negative. Turns out Osaka is an industrial port city filled with very few touristy things and lots and lots of sketchy people. The nightscape was pretty cool, but I was afraid to stay out late enough to really enjoy it. Furthermore, Osaka's subway lines were very limited in their English labeling, so it was incredibly challenging and frustrating to get around the city. To put it kindly, I will not be visiting Osaka again...

After taking a slew of mandatory evening pictures and visiting one castle, I got bored with Osaka and took a day trip out to Nara, another lovely temple filled, UNESCO world heritage sight-heavy town about an hour to the east of my hotel. 

What made Nara really stand out was that there were about 1200 deer wandering the streets and temples with you. Apparently in pre-Buddhist times, deer were considered the messengers of the gods, and today they're considered national treasures and given free reign of the town. It added a fun quirky flair to the day.

The world's largest wooden building, Daibutsu-den Hall at Todai-ji.

And with that little side trip, I completed my tour of Japan. Turns out Japan is a great country filled with some of the kindest people I have ever met, and I am so glad I ended up spending my summer vacation there! There are a couple things and places I will probably never venture to again, but overall, it was a wonderful experience and a beautiful country. End. 

Cheers!

 - Christine - 

ps. If you're looking for more pictures of Tokyo and Mt. Fuji, click here. If you want to see more of Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara, click here. Enjoy :)

Counting Down (again...)

At the risk of sounding cliche, I just don't know where the past twelve months have gone! Can you believe I have only 5 more days of teaching in Korea!?!?! What happened? Where did the time go? And how am I already 24? Whoa... 

I bet you're all thinking to yourselves, yeah cool, that's great, congrats and all, but what's next? Well, dear readers, let's talk a little bit about this future of mine, shall we?

Let me start out by sharing a very simple fact about myself. I am not much of a planner. At all. I am a chronic procrastinator opposed to anything even remotely involving decision-making, especially of the large-scale life-changing variety. When confronted with a decision to make, I generally just clam up, refuse to acknowledge that I am in the midst of a decision-making situation, try to weasel my way out of said decision-making situation by convincing myself that the whole thing is not really all that important anyways, before finally at the last possible minute, doing something about it. It's a ridiculous process filled with lots of anxiety (and animal metaphors). 

So for those of you looking for more concrete answers than "Yeah, I still have no idea..." here's what I know so far. If it's not specific enough for your liking, please refer to the above paragraph. I'm serious, it's unhealthy how bad at planning things I really am. 

July 27 -- Last day of teaching. Sad, (but also definitely not...)

July 28 -- Fly to Tokyo. At 8:40 in the morning. Bienvenido a Japan!!!

August 5 -- Fly back from Kyoto to Seoul. (See that gaping hole in the middle, the part about me somehow getting from Tokyo to Kyoto? Just let it be...)

August 6ish -- Take Kimchi back to our Bucheon vet for one final checkup, before...

August 8ish -- Fly to Cleveland

(September-ish -- Begin Korea round 2. TBD)

The last two dates are extremely rough estimates (emphasis on the rough part), so please forgive me if they are totally wrong. Something about not having any America-bound plane tickets yet to speak of plus the whole flying with a puppy thing. Yeah, there's a lot of room for change. I will try to keep you posted on my tentative itinerary, but since it turns out getting out of Korea is just as complicated a process as getting into Korea, I might not have the time. 

Cheers!

 - Christine - 

Zombies

After my admittedly discouraging post yesterday, I wanted to up the positivity level in my blog and write about one of my favorite experiences thus far in Korea.

Zombie pictures.

Let me explain. About a month ago, I found myself spending a weekend in Busan. Somehow we started talking about Murphy the Gnome, the infamous garden gnome who was stolen from his home in some English woman’s front yard and taken on a prolonged trip around the world, the abductor taking 48 pictures of Murphy in such exotic locations as South Africa, New Zealand, Thailand, and Vietnam before returning Murphy safe and sound to his home in England with the photographic evidence of his world travels. I think it’s just hilarious and wish I would have thought of it first.

We eventually started questioning what would be even cooler than pictures of a gnome traveling around the world, and came to the conclusion that zombies are the next best thing. Obviously. Thus began our weekend of taking zombie pictures in Busan. Ps. Thanks to Kevin, Liz, and Mary for the inspiration :)

Our zombie pictures started out pretty mild, but we gradually started trying more to incorporate our surroundings into our pictures. Like I said, these are from about a month ago, but they are pretty silly…































And this is how I spent my weekend at the Pusan International Film Festival. Note: These better have made you at least smile and/or laugh audibly...

I suppose Alex is arguably a better zombie than me... oh well. I suppose there are worse things in the world. Regardless, it was one of the funniest weekends I've had in Korea, and who knows, maybe you'll be lucky enough to see some more zombie pictures in the near future. Enjoy the positivity.

Cheers!

- Christine -

Trains

When you move half way across the world, you find that there are some possessions you own that just don't end up fitting into your 100 pounds plus two carry-ons worth of luggage. Unfortunately, my baby car was one of them.

If you've ever spoken to me in person, you know how I feel about my baby car. On the one hand I really miss her terribly. Natalie, my 2008 silver 5-door Subaru Impreza. Gave me the independence I needed to survive college in a small town and the ability to get where I needed to go on a whim. Like Maryland for a friend's wedding over a two-day weekend. Or Chicago for the lamest job interview of my life. Or even just Walmart at 4 am for $35 worth of Post It Notes for an April Fool's Day prank. I really do miss my car.

At the same time, however, my not having a car has made me much more comfortable with the idea of public transportation. In a lot of ways, Korea is much much more eco-friendly than the U.S. (although that's a hippie rant for another day...), and I'm actually enjoying the fact that I'm getting so used to relying completely on subways, trains, and my own two legs to get me from point A to point B on a regular basis.

In particular, I'm learning to love the KTX trains. The more I think about it, the cooler they really are. For all of 43,000 won, I can hop on a train at Gwangmyeong station and it will take me to Busan at the opposite end of the country in a little over two and a half hours at speeds of about 305 km/hour. Which is crazy fast. Why they haven't started working on such a high-speed rail system in the states is still beyond me? I know they work fantastic for a country the size of Indiana, just imagine how wonderful they would be for getting around a country as large as the U.S! What's more, by taking the scenic routes through both the most rural and industrial parts of the country, you get to see the landscape from a vantage point you would never see by just driving along the major freeways. I think it's really kinda cool anyways...

This past weekend, I went down to Busan for an International fireworks festival and found myself with some time to kill waiting for my train at Gwangmyeong station. And since I know there are certain people who read this blog back in the states that share and in some cases even trump my enjoyment of trains, I decided to take some pictures of the station. And the trains. You're welcome, Dad.























Enjoy!

- Christine -