during the summer, before i could drive myself around and had to be deposited somewhere while my parents were both earning an income to support my luxurious eating habits, i used to stay at a family friend's house. in the mornings, before most of the house was awake, i would relax in their basement and watch the early morning cartoons and play with their cats. this including shows like mighty max, power rangers, and captain planet. but most notable, and probably the most influential on my viewing habits as i grew older, was ronin warriors, an animated show from japan about samurai in special armor that granted them the power of the elements. not to get too sidetracked, but there's always something interesting to me about shows that feature teams of heroes each with their own unique ability. it lets you choose a favorite, fantasize about your own uniqueness, feel the specialness of being part of a team outside of the world of sports. anyways, from here i was hooked. soon i would be writing high school term papers on the bushido code. later, watching films of the japanese new wave. i was, and am, one of those people - the japanophile. and yet here i am, in korea.
the one nice thing that does afford me is a geographic location that is the closest i have ever been to japan. you would think weekend trips to the islands would have been a frequent thing but then do you realize how expensive japan is? a 7 day rail pass costs close to half a grand. that is not an exaggeration. and so fear of draining capital was my main deterrent in making the trip. that is until last week, when i had a bit of vacation, i decided to take the 3 hour cruise across the pond to visit our neighbors to the east if only for a few days.
getting there was still a bit of an undertaking. starting from daegu around 7am, i took a bus to the ktx, the ktx to busan, the ferry to fukuoka and then a bus to the main station. i made it to my hostel early afternoon. first order of business was to find some ramen. with the help of the hostel employees i was soon enjoying a hot bowl of hakata ramen and gyoza (japanese dumplings). having no other plans aside from visiting japan i got a map from the hostel office and started wandering around the city. i eventually made my way to ohori park, a huge spread of green with a lake in the middle and a series of islands connected by bridges. it was nearing dusk as i made my way around, accidentally stumbling upon tucked away shrines and enormous castle ruins. clearly wandering was the way to go. later that night i walked around the tenjin area of downtown, simultaneously amused and horrified by the selection of smutty bars, until i found an out of the way reggae/dub bar that was big enough for maybe 10 people at maximum capacity. i pulled up a seat at the bar and quickly made friends with the bartender and the 2 other guys at the bar, whose english was pretty low but, then again, that's what phones are for, right? among the normal pleasantries of "where are you from" and "how long are you in japan" they taught me useful things like how to say "give me a beer" and "where is the toilet?" in japanese ('beer-u kadusae' - i think? - and 'toire wa doko desu-ka?', respectively). they also gave me a free shot of shochu, the japanese variety of soju, which is about 500 times better than the korean stuff. later a cute girl came in (i think she had some kind of pupil abnormality that made the color of her iris leak into the whites of her eyes that i thought was really cool) and was very friendly (there's no deeper meaning here, she was just genuinely very friendly) and i thought to myself, "i could grow used to this country."
the next day i woke up early and took a 3 hour bus ride to beppu, a city known for its onsen (hot springs). the bus ride there was an eye-opening experience. for being geographically and topographically similar, there's just something more...beautiful about japan. i was talking with my friend jeremy about this and we both agree that there is some mysterious quality that makes japan's mountains and valleys trump korea's. japan's mountains felt more awe-inspiring. the valley's somehow more bathed in rays of sunlight. the vistas more expansive. it was an immediate understanding and i tried the entire bus ride to pinpoint the source of superiority but it just seemed like it was something mysterious and unaccountable, like luck, rather than a physical characteristic.
when i got there i realized how stinking with onsen it actually was. and if you know that hot springs are usually formed by sulfur pools then you'll understand that 'stinking' is no joke. the air is full of clouds of white smoke from the hundreds(?) of baths in the city. there are even separate classes of onsen, those for looking at and those for bathing in, but i skipped the viewing ones as they were sort of expensive and, i figured, probably not that interesting. instead, after another bowl of ramen (i could seriously eat that everyday), i began my search for a hidden onsen i read about in the hostel's lonely planet. unfortunately this required a bit of skill at the japanese bus system, of which i had none, and even though the information desk lady was helpful enough, i still got turned around and lost plenty of times. which would have been okay had i not been caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella. fortunately the locals were always happy to point me in the vaguely-right direction. after climbing the mountain side and snaking past an enormous hillside cemetery i eventually came upon the small dirt path that would lead me to tsuru-no-yu, the hidden onsen i read about. this onsen is 100% outdoor, surrounded by mountainous nature, and very public. when i arrived there were already three naked japanese men in the baths. im assuming, being a public bath, women could also frequent but thankfully none were present at the time. i'm not sure i could have handled the awkwardness. having read a crash course in onsen etiquette, i disrobed, washed myself before entering the pools, and then slowly dipped myself into the scalding hot water. had it not rained beforehand i'm not sure i could have handled the temperature, but with the cool post-rain mountain air, the waters were quite pleasant, even enjoyable. i spent close to an hour there, just relaxing, before air-drying myself and making the hike back down. as it was still early i decided to do some more wandering which eventually led me to a hill top shrine/castle type building. i'm still not entirely sure what it was. i do know that when i got there they were closing up but let me take a quick tour anyways. the tour consisted of having an albino python placed around my shoulders (seemingly out of nowhere - i was beckoned over to a little cubby hole and all the sudden there was a huge white snake, i didnt even have time to take a picture), praying in front of a shrine with an old japanese man, and what looked to be a war memorial on the top floor (but then i have a hard time not seeing a japanese flag and sensing some kind of violence - i honestly just think its the huge red dot in the middle of a white field that invokes it). after the tour i decided to make my way back to fukuoka so i could enjoy the next day instead of wasting it traveling on a bus.
back in fukuoka i stopped by a conveyor sushi place for dinner. each plate was a little over a dollar. it wasn't great but was certainly serviceable and i managed to fill my gullet for roughly five dollars. on the very same floor was an arcade so i decide to spend a few coin playing various music and light-gun games until they shut it down. the next day i went to the main station and went shopping for some gifts for friends back in korea. at this point its somewhat of a running gag that my british friend jamie loves soju, which isn't really a joke as he does love soju, but its essentially become all he's known for, so i bought him a small bottle of shochu. and for jeremy and ausannete, who were in malaysia celebrating their one year wedding anniversary, i bought his and her shinkansen (bullet train) ramen bowls (complete with tonkatsu ramen!). at that point i had a couple of hours to make it to the ferry but i soon realized that the night before had sort of kind of accidentally given the rest of my money to a homeless man. to be fair it was all pocket change at that point, but pocket change in japan can still be around ten dollars depending on what that change is...i guess i can't be too upset at an act of charity. so i decide to wander to the station, which as i learned from the rest of the trip, opened up new and hidden sights that i probably would have missed had i just took a bus.
i ended up getting back to daegu around 10pm and that's all i really wish to say about my return back to korea. in the end, i wish i could have stayed more than the 3 days/2 nights my trip encompassed, but i was glad to have gotten a feel for the country i had always dreamed about. having not gone to tokyo or osaka or any big tourist area, i think i got a good introduction into what life in japan would be like and it is, much to my expectations, a life i wouldn't mind experiencing a little bit longer. who knows when i'll make it back and under what circumstances (teaching? traveling? living indefinitely?), all i know is i will for sure be making it back and hopefully sooner rather than later.
and on a semi-related side-note, this solo-travel, loose-itinerary experience has made me both confident and excited about my upcoming solo-travel, loose-itinerary trip to malaysia/indonesia. as per the norm, check the photos below:
ohori park/lake
a series of bridges
this dude was sitting on one of the bridges practicing his trumpeting skills (a little rough at the moment but hang in there buddy, you can do it!). across the way, on the other side of the lake, maybe even viewable in the large copy of this photo, another man was practicing his trumpeting skills. it was almost like they were playing off of each other, jazz style, from across the lake.
part of the castle ruins. unfortunately, most of the castle was just ruins, but as you can see below they offered a nice view at sunset of the city.
a panoramic view of beppu (composed of 3 different shots - photoshop skilllllzzz - actually, real photoshop skills would have make the photo seamless but i'm not made of time)
the hillside cemetery i hiked past to get to the onsen. no pictures at the onsen of obvious reasons, which is unfortunate because it was quite picturesque.
i just couldn't believe it. i didn't buy it though. instead, i went with the crab juice.
the shrine/castle/whatever up on the hilltop
and closer up
all that steam is just people enjoying some hot water
some place i found in my wanderings...its probably just someone's home but the architecture is just so nice.
