Japan! Part 2 - Nagasaki

We got up at 9am on our first morning in Japan and headed off to the train station. We had bought 3 day JR rail passes just for the northern Kyushu island area which allowed us to take pretty much any train we wanted except for the fastest bullet trains. However, there aren't any bullet train lines in that part of Japan so that was no hassle. The Japan Rail passes give foreigners a good deal on the price of rail travel which apparently is exorbitantly expensive usually. You can only buy the rail passes if you're in a country other than Japan and if you don't live in Japan though so it's no good for folk who live there. We caught an express train to Nagasaki and it looked pretty cool even though it wasn't a bullet train. We grabbed some breakfast from the station. I got some delicious bakery stuff that was filled with ham and cheese and unlike Korean 'bakeries' (Paris Baguette, Tous les Jours) the food actually seemed to be based on French cooking rather than being a bizarre assimilation (sugary garlic bread is a Korean bakery standard). Rowan got a bento box with rice, veg and a piece of salmon in it, a good cheap Japanese take out meal.

The express train to Nagasaki. It looked as cool on the inside as it did on the outside, with big comfy chairs and wooden floor boards.

Rowan's bento box. The strange looking vegetable is a lotus root.

The views from the train were lovely, rice paddies, small villages and rugged mountains . The colours were really vivid. We arrived in Nagasaki around 1pm and caught a tram to the Peace Park, a memorial park on the site where the second atomic bomb landed on 9 August 1945. Then we visited the Atomic Bomb Museum It was an interesting, thought provoking museum but of course it was extremely sad and some of the exhibits and photos were really painful to look at.

The simple black memorial plinth in the Peace Park. It was placed in the exact spot where the bomb exploded. The park was very peaceful, leafy and green. It was hard to connect this with the photos of devastation in the museum.

Part of the Urakami cathedral that was mostly destroyed in the explosion. This is one of the few remaining parts. At the time of the bombing it was the largest Catholic church in the East. Ironically, the US Air Force managed to score a near direct hit on the church, killing over 20 people who were gathered inside for a service.

Another memorial statue in the Peace Park, commemorating the 75,000 people who died in the atomic explosion.

A river running through the Peace Park. Scientists originally predicted that nothing would be able to grow here for at least 70 years so the Peace Park is really very special.

This lady was selling ice cream on the edge of the Peace Park, near a Nagasaki tow-path.

The light and airy atrium in the centre of the museum.

This clock is an exhibit in the museum. It's bent hands are stuck forever at 11.02am, the time when the bomb exploded over Nagasaki.

After the museum we caught a tram back to the train station and took a walk around some of the many temples in Nagasaki. There were too many to mention individually but they were all very beautiful.

Trams in Nagasaki.

Fukusai-ji Kannon temple is in the form of a huge turtle with a 18m high figure of the goddess Kannon standing on its back.

Close up of the Kannon goddess statue.

Rowan walking down Temple Row (Tera-Machi), a famous road filled with temples in Nagasaki.

One of the many temples on Tera-Machi.

Dragon detail from one of Nagasaki's temples.

A stone carving on the Tera-Machi.

These two funny little guys (note the giant balls) were outside a temple on Tera-Machi.

A Dutch house in Nagasaki. Nagasaki was one of the first cities in Japan to start trading with the West and there was a Dutch trading post in Nagasaki from the mid 17th century to 1855 that was the only point of contact between Japan and the rest of the world.

Rowan got this picture of crazy car parking Japanese style. Basically, you park your car on a metal platform and then it's rotated up and away like it's on a giant ferris wheel and is kept moving within the huge multi storey building, presumably until you want to get it back again.

After looking round the temple row we looped through the centre of town, past the harbour and then made our way back to the station. We picked up some delicious takoyaki (octopus balls) and ate them on the train back to Fukuoka. We wanted to get back to the hostel in good time as we planned to make a stupidly early start to get to Mount Aso, a huge volcanic crater that contains an active volcano, the next day. Unfortunately , this meant we didn't get to try any Nagasaki champon (the local ramen dish made with pork, octopus, squid, fish patties and vegetables) but I suppose you can't do everything!

Nagasaki harbour at sunset.

Japan! Part 1- Busan and Fukuoka

Okay, so I know Busan isn't in Japan (it's the second largest city in South Korea) but we took a ferry from Busan to Japan so I'm including it in this post about our Japan holiday. Anyways, our trip to Japan was a revelation and possibly the start of what will be a long love affair. I think I had a few misconceptions about what Japan and it's people would be like. I thought that Japan would be all sprawling cities peopled by polite but reserved automatons but we found (on our short visit) that this wasn't the case at all. Maybe this says more about my ignorance than anything else! The countryside was beautiful and pretty much every person we met there was really friendly and helpful. Oh, and the food was amazing too.

We took a ferry from Busan to Fukuoka, the largest city on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.

We went to Japan for 5 days over the Chuseok break. Chuseok is a kind of harvest moon festival in Korea where everything closes for at least 3 days (Tues - Thurs) and everybody goes to stay with their family, usually going to the oldest relative's house, which is usually out in the countryside. This means three things:

1. Time off (I got Tues - Fri off, Rowan got the whole week)

2. High prices for air/rail/sea travel as everything sells out very quickly

3. Serious traffic congestion on the roads

We decided to take advantage of the Chuseok break to go to Japan for a brief visit. Fearing that the traffic was going to be insane we got up early on Tuesday morning and allowed ourselves 2 hours to get to Seongnam Coach station. However, all the traffic was going in the other direction so it only took us 30 mins which is quicker than normal. We killed a bit of time wandering around the giant Homeplus store (which is part owned by Tesco) and tried some free samples of Chuseok rice cakes that weren't actually too bad considering they were rice cakes, not usually our favourite food.

At 9.10am we got on a cramped coach (unfortunately it was the worst coach we've been on in Korea) and spent the first hour or two on quiet, winding back roads so we didn't hit much traffic but once we hit the motorway things changed and we were going nowhere fast! 3 rest stops and 8 hours later we finally got to Busan - that's a journey that normally takes about 4 - 4.5 hours. Not fun, but we made it in the end and when we finally got there at around 5pm we visited the Beomusa Temple which is just one subway stop away from the coach station. It was beautiful and we were lucky enough to see the monks banging the huge drum at dusk. There must have been a lot of mozzies about though as I had 14 bites by the end of the day!

Beomusa Temple was a really lovely, peaceful place up on the hills above Busan.

Beomusa participates in the Korean Temple Stay programme. The folk in the black robes are temple stayers.

Stone pagoda at Beomusa.

A pavilion containing a huge drum.

The temple buildings had bells with fish shaped clappers hanging off them.

As we were about to leave these monks started drumming. It was an incredible, energetic display.

Close up of the monk drumming.

That night we found a really cheap motel for 25,000 won a room, the cheapest yet. It had been slated in the Lonely Planet guidebook but the room was clean and reasonable though there was no hot water in the morning. Next morning, we wandered down to the International Ferry Terminal and took the Beetle Ferry (a fast and cool looking hydrofoil) from Busan to Fukuoka, a large port city on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. The Korean immigration officers were very thorough and seemed pretty grumpy. Presumably they were pissed off that they had to work over Chuseok. It was a really rough crossing to Fukuoka and I don't think I was the only one starting to feel a bit sea sick by the time we arrived. I noticed a few people actually seemed to be reading their emergency evacuation info cards rather than just using them as fans and Koreans never usually seem to care about health and safety!

The Beetle Ferry hydrofoil that we caught to Fukuoka.

We had to stay in our seats for the whole journey as it was so rough so we were relieved when we finally arrived in Fukuoka though the weather didn't look too promising. The Japanese immigration were more friendly than their Korean counterparts though even more thorough - they take your photograph and digital scans of your fingerprints when you enter the country. We caught a bus to Hakata JR train station, the main station in Fukuoka, and walked to our accommodation, the International Khaosan Hostel, which we had booked online for the 4 nights we were staying in Japan. The hostel was really good, the rooms were clean and the staff were friendly and helpful. There was loads of useful information on the walls about good places to go and visit nearby and they even had adaptor plugs that you could borrow.

We stayed ion a twin private room in the Khaosan hostel. It was tiny but cheap, very clean and with good air-con too. We had bunk beds!

That evening we went out to explore Fukuoka. It's probably useful to note here that Fukuoka actually comprised of two towns, Fukuoka and Hakata, which were merged in the late 19th century. Officially the modern city is called Fukuoka but apparently a lot of it's residents still refer to it as Hakata and the main rail station is called Hakata too. First we visited some nearby temples where we saw lots of bats, then we walked into the centre to take in the bright lights of a Japanese city before going to get some dinner. Hakata is famous for it's ramen (noodles in a flavoured broth), particularly tonkotsu-ramen, where the broth is made from pork bones. We went to a friendly little ramen shop called Hakata Ippudo Ramen and had some of the best noodles I have ever eaten in my life as well as some dainty little gyoza (Chinese style fried dumplings).

The bright lights of Fukuoka city.

Taxis in Fukuoka were pretty crazy looking - they looked like they would fit in better in Delhi or Marrakesh than sleek, modern Fukuoka.

The obligatory night time traffic shot in Japan.

This was the traditional Hakata style ramen in pork both - it was delicious with a real depth of flavour. We had it with extra sliced, barbqued pork on top which was delicious.

We also ordered a bowl of the house special ramen which was even better than the Hakata noodles (sacrilege!). It was quite spicy and again had an amazing depth of flavour.

Tiny fried gyozas - according to the Lonely Planet guidebook, they made them small so that well to do ladies didn't have to 'suffer the indignity of opening their mouths too wide to eat them'.

After our tasty meal we wondered some more around Fukuoka, visiting a crazy games arcade, a Japanese supermarket (has to be done when visit a new country) and Canal City, a huge shopping mall with an artificial canal and dancing fountains.

This guy was amazing on the drumming game, his hands moved so fast.

There were these weird pods kn the arcade that had a massive panoramic display inside, 2 joysticks, loads of random controls and pedals.

This is me inside the one of the pods trying to play the game. It was fun but confusing - don't think I managed to get the high score though.

A row of yatai stalls by the riverside. Yatai are food stalls on wheels replete witha portable kitchen, stools and drinks.

There's no smoking on the streets in Fukuoka so if you want to light up outside you have to go to one of these smoking shelters.

We eventually called it a night and went back to the hostel to get some sleep and get ready for the next day's adventures in Nagasaki.

Between the Acts

What with all the holiday updates we've been putting up recently you'd be forgiven for thinking we don't actually do anything but go on holiday! Of course that's not true, life has been going on much as normal in Gwangju its just we've been so behind with our holiday reports there has been no time to talk about it. So what have we been up to for the last month or so?

Sophie is now the proud owner of a new keyboard. She has decided that she wants to learn the piano and we'd heard from people at our Korean class that there is a massive musical instrument market called Nakwon in Insadong so we went and checked it out. The market is inside a massive old building and spread over three confusing floors that seem to extend forever in all directions. We spent a while browsing and eventually went home with a Yamaha E323 for 260 000 won. On our way home we were going to walk down Insadong-gil, the main shopping street running through Insadong and maybe try some of the delicious tea available around there. But as we got near the streets seemed to be filled with nervous looking riot police and given the Korean reputation for loving a good riot we decided to make ourselves scarce.

Police awaiting the rioters in Insadong, we never saw any rioters, but we didn't wait around for them.

We had a night out in Bundang for an American friend's last night in Korea. It was our first experience of a Korean night club and a pretty good night. We started out with a curry at the Bundang brach of the Agra Taj, it was pretty nice but not a patch on the curry we had in Jeju. After the curry we headed to Travellers bar, a foreigners bar in Bundang, and finally we headed to a club but I was far too drunk by then to remember what it was called.

Reach for the lasers! Me getting my funky thing on in the club in Bundang.

The day after our night out in Bundang we were feeling a little worse for wear so slept until pretty late in the day. Once we finally roused ourselves it was too late to go out anywhere far away so we decided to investigate the nearby fortress in Gwangju. We hopped on the number 15 bus from our local bus stop by the stadium and after a 20 minute scenic bus ride up the hill we found ourselves in a pleasant little tourist village with restaurants, tourist motels and lots of car parks. It was more like something you'd expect to find in the neighbouring province of Gangwon-do than in urbanised Gyeonggi-do. The fortress itself was pretty nice although we only had the chance to walk a little way round the outer wall before we had to go home, but we will definitely return to make a proper day of it before the winter sets in.

The fortress wall. A lot of it was destroyed during the Japanese occupation of Korea and has been rebuilt with rather inauthentic materials.

The east gate of the fortress.

This waterwheel with a little boy weeing on it was in the village just by the bus stop.

We took a trip to Chuncheon with Dean, it was a nice trip although very wet! Chuncheon is a popular place for weekend trips for the university students of Seoul and famous as the home of dak galbi (닭갈비). Dak galbi is a kind of stir fry dish composed of chicken, rice cakes, cabbage and sweet potato in chilli paste cooked in front of you on a big hot plate. It's such a big deal in Chuncheon that there is a whole street of dak galbi restaurants and a dak galbi festival every autumn.

It would be ridiculous to go to Chuncheon and not eat dak galbi so of course we gave it a try, and it was good.

Despite the rain we took a train ride to the adjacent town of Gwacheon where you can do a bit of quad bike/ATV riding and considering all the fun we had on Jeju we had to give it another go.

Sophie down by the river having fun despite having to wear a pink condom style disposable rain coat.

The train station at Gwacheon is one of the few places in Korea where I've seen graffiti. This being low crime Korea it was of course officially sanctioned graffiti.

We stayed the night in a love motel in Chuncheon which had a sex toy vending machine in the corridor!

So as the summer has drawn to an end it has finally stopped raining, the skies are clearer but the temperatures are starting to drop and it seems like that promised Siberian winter is just around the corner. The kids at school are getting crazier and crazier as the year goes on and according to our co-teachers they will just get worse until the new school year starts in March next year. Sophie has started teaching after school classes which she's mostly enjoying. My after school classes are on hold because not enough people signed up which is a shame. We've re-enrolled in Korean classes and it's getting tougher now we're covering some serious grammar. Our English neighbours downstairs are returning to the UK soon which is a shame but we're going to get a Canadian couple in their place so we'll have to see what they're like.

The next post will cover our exciting exploits in Japan where we went for our Chuseok holiday. Chuseok is a traditional Korean holiday, a kind of harvest moon festival, and it means a few days off for us teacher types. Our trip to Japan was only a five day flying visit but it was pretty cool so keep tuned in to read all about it.