Eating Korean Barbeque… IN KOREA!

Asia ~ South Korea ~ Busan

Last week I decided to swing by my travel agent in downtown Fukuoka to see if they had any deals for travel to South Korea, as it is so close to Fukuoka, and I’ve never been. When I found a deal that included the return trip on a boat, and a night in a hotel that was cheaper than just the boat trip, I decided to grab it. As a result, 24 hours later I was speeding across the Korea Straight towards Busan on the JR Kyushu ‘Beetle ‘ hydrofoil…

As per normal, I had the normal issues travelling… Got to my local bus stop to see the bus leaving, even though I was 5 minutes early… Raced to get the bus, but it wasn’t until halfway to town I realised I had left my alien registration card (my Japanese ID card) at my apartment. They made a big fuss of it when I left Japan last time, but I decided I didn’t have time to go back and get it… Then the bus, which was supposed to go to the bus terminal (so I could change to a bus headed for the port) stopped at the station, and said it was going no further! Turns out when I raced for the bus earlier, I had jumped on the earlier bus, not the right one that went all of the way, so I had to try and find the bus terminal on foot. Everyone I asked didn’t know where it was, cos I was ages away from it… Finally found the correct bus stop and got to the port terminal, where I went through emigration with no issues – the girl asked for my ID card, but when I said I’d left it behind, she was fine with it. I suspect that if I hadn’t of spoken Japanese, there would of been problems.

The JR Kyushu ‘Beetle’ hydrofoil is a very small ferry that takes 3 hours to make the crossing between Hakata (Fukuoka, Japan) and Busan (South Korea). We were warned to keep our seatbelts on because they often “have to swerve quickly to avoid whales and dolphins”. I kept my eyes peeled, but didn’t see any. Did see a very interesting lighthouse as we were leaving Japan that was bright red and decked out as Santa for Christmas (complete with white beard and all).

See the boat at the back (it says BEETLE)? That's the ferry that we crossed international waters in, only 3 hours, but still, it's tiny! The ferry at the front is the international overnight one from Shimonoseki (only 1 hour from Fukuoka).

When I mentioned to my Japanese friends that I would be heading to South Korea for a night, I asked them what there was to do in Korea – everyones response was “Shopping and food”, so I headed to Busan with a list of markets to find and foods to try. On arrival, I headed for the main train station, where I jumped on a double decker tour bus, which proceeded to take me around the city for only ₩10,000 (approx $10 AUD). I jumped off at Haeundae Beach to get some lunch (time to start crossing of the “food list”!). Surprise, surprise, at one of the most touristy spots in town I ended up munching down on good ol’ Aussie burgers, not a Bimbimbap restaurant in sight. Wandered around the area for a while (saw the Fish Car – a small car near the aquarium that has been turned into a fish tank, with large colourful fish swimming through the steering wheel and gearstick).

Fish Car at Haeundae Beach

Checkin to my hotel was quick and easy – upon discovering I spoke Japanese, communication went from haltering English to fluent Japanese. Helps of course that I was staying in the Japanese part of town, in a Japanese hotel, but still much better than attempting to communicate in my non existent Korean (but perhaps my next language to learn?). My day finished up with a Korean barbeque for dinner, recommended by my hotel as “cheap and delicious”. And they weren’t joking, at only ₩12,000 (approx $12 AUD) for a huge amount of quality beef, kimchi and beer. They didn’t bat an eyelid when I came in on my own (despite Korean barbeque being a shared dish), and the owners mum helped me sort out the barbeque. I have never had real Korean barbeque before, it is eaten quite different in Korea compared to Japan – a long piece of beef on the barbeque was cut up into pieces (by the amused owners mum when she realised I had no idea what I was doing), and then dipped into sauce. Kimchi is added (all of the various bowls around the table are kimchi) on top, and then eaten. And, if you’re like me, and the owners mum is amused by you, she will put all of this together for you and basically spoon-feed (chopstick-feed) you!

Korean Barbeque

On my second/last day in Busan, I headed out to fulfill my shopping component of my list. Busan is famous for it’s Jagalchi Fish Market, but having been to the world’s largest fish market in Tokyo, I wasn’t particularly interested in seeking out this one. Despite my intentions, I ended up at the fish market whilst trying to find another market. The fish market was surprisingly clean and not too smelly, and I saw plenty of interesting sights, including tanks upon tanks of sea snakes, and octopus’s making a run for it in the street. I eventually found the Gukje market, but didn’t buy anything, as I’m going to China soon, and much of the stuff at the market was similar to the things I usually see in China. Had bimbimbap for lunch (another tick on the “food list”) at ₩4,000 (approx $4 AUD), which was much spicier and tastier than other versions I have eaten in Japan and Australia. My day ended with me wandering back to the ferry terminal, where I caught my speedy boat back “home” to Japan.

I’ve just begun to start thinking about my Christmas shopping, how’s everyone else going?!

Just call me Travel Agent Bobbi!

Asia ~ Japan ~ Fukuoka & Beppu

Once again, blogs have been few and far between, whoops. It’s been a month of accomplishments with my Japanese – I can now do many things in Japanese that I never before had the ability or courage to do: order pizza delivery over the phone, direct a taxi driver to my apartment, make travel arrangements with a travel agent and more. Most of these things are activities I never even had the opportunity to do in English, in Australia – I live in the sticks, so getting a taxi home, or getting pizza delivered has never been an option. I’m finally beginning to really function over here!

Gyoza at the gyoza restaurant in Hakata

My friend Jen from home has been visiting me for the past two weeks, and it’s been a blast. I’ve taken her around to do plenty of things around Kyushu, including clubbing in Fukuoka (stumbling home at 7am after spending all night at “Happy Cock”, all you can drink for 2000 yen, who can go past that?!), horse races in Saga (where you go not to watch the races in Saga, but to bet on the races in Kyoto!), temples in Dazaifu (students are starting to cram, the temple was packed!), a home party drinking cocktails and eating oden in Kurume (and laughing the night away with crazy cousins!), bali style onsens in Chikushi (Jen’s first onsen!), sand onsens, hostels and “hell valley” in Beppu (natural bubbling colourful pits of sulphur water, reminiscent of what hell may look like), souvenir shopping at the many 100-yen shops in Fukuoka (and then finding a post office that will accept the 100-odd kg of souvenirs that Jen bought!) and shopping and watching movies at Canal City in Fukuoka (New Moon has FINALLY come out in Japan!).

Students tying their fortunes up at Dazaifu

Matt’s headed off on his next adventure – he is now in Taiwan looking for a job, leaving me in Japan all on my own… Never fear, with my newfound pizza (and sushi, curry, hotpot, Korean, Indian etc etc) ordering abilities, I think I should survive. Throw in the attention of my host sister and cousin (I have an accessible apartment in the city, a big bonus on a Saturday night when trains stop at 11:30pm! This Saturday night is the first I haven’t been out till 7am, and it was only because Jen was leaving early Sunday that I was excused!) and my other Japanese friends.

At the Moomin cafe in canal city. If you're lucky, Mr Moomin himself will come and sit at your table to help you drink your gingerbread hot chocolate (which is easily the best hot chocolate I've ever had, and so it should be at $8 a cup).

Now it’s back to work, sorting out my parents itinerary for when they rock up in two weeks time. We’ll be hiring a car (eek!) and traveling a bit of Kyushu before heading to Kyoto & Osaka for a couple a days, and then heading to China on the ferry. Just call me Travel Agent Bobbi!

Introducing the Asian typhoon

Australasia ~ Australia ~ Victoria ~ Home and Asia ~ The Philippines ~ Manila and Asia ~ Japan ~ Fukuoka & Hiroshima

So much has happened, and yet nothing has happened since my last post – nearly 2 months ago! What can I say? Once again I’ve slipped into holiday mode, and have slacked off a bit on my blogging. Almost immediately after writing my last post, it was decided that I was needed back in Australia to help out the family business with our annual promotion. So we madly scrambled around to find a decent flight back to Australia at extremely short notice, and came up with a Philippine Air flight. “Hmmm, they seem to have a bad reputation”, mentioned mum. “FANTASTIC, I’ve never been to the Philippines”, I thought…

My two weeks back in Australia were full on, 12 hour days really take it out of you, but I did get to spend some time with my nephew, so it wasn’t all bad. And I managed to convince one of my friends to come back to Japan with me for a holiday. And so it was that Leah spent her very first typhoon locked up in a 4 star hotel in Manila with me, and her second ever typhoon madly riding through the wind to get to our favourite okonomiyaki restaurant…

People waiting to catch a train in amongst the typhoon

We had a whirlwind 3 days in Manila on the way over to Japan from Melbourne… Day 1 we arrived at 6.30am, had a snooze then wandered around the streets – it was hot and humid, but bearable with a slight breeze… We talked about doing a tour the next day. Day 2 we decided to go shopping at the mall next to the hotel, as it was raining “a bit”. On the way out the door, we noticed the concierge had umbrellas – so we asked when they expected the rain to stop, to try and decide if we needed to get an umbrella. He said that the storm would start at 2pm (this was at about 10am). We assumed he made a mistake, he meant the storm would finish at 2pm, and headed through the torrential rain (a bit of a summer storm we assumed) to the nearby shopping centre. Wandered around the shopping centres for most of the day. At about 2pm the weather did indeed turn worse, terrible winds and rain. At this stage we still thought it was just a summer storm, we hadn’t heard the news. It wasn’t until we passed the Apple Store that we found out – it was closed, with a big sign up saying “Closed for the typhoon”. We started heading back to our hotel, it was bucketing down with rain everywhere, lines to get taxis and trains where huge (I’m not sure the trains were running). Luckily our hotel was right in the centre of town, so we just walked through the malls to get back. Not until we got to Japan did we realise just how bad it really was over there (we weren’t watching the news in Manila – we had plenty of DVD’s from the markets to get through!).

Leah surrounded by shopping in Manila

Leah and I spent a fantastic couple of weeks in Japan, running around visiting my favourite places. Amongst a bunch of things, we rode the shinkansen to Hiroshima, visited the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, the deers in Miyajima, Leah stayed in her first hostel in Hiroshima and we were interviewed by a Japanese TV station at Dazaifu, questioned about our ‘fashionable’ clothing (we were wearing jeans and thongs…). Leah was all set to come to our Wednesday English class, when our student SMS’d us to suggest we cancel the lesson, because of the approaching typhoon. Leah still wanted okonomiyaki for dinner, so we battled the winds to ride to our favourite restaurant despite the warnings… We were fine, and the typhoon ended up passing by us through the night, hopefully the typhoon’s are over for the year.

This red torii (gate) at the Itsukushima Shrine (Miyajima) welcomes visitors to the island - famous throughout Japan and the rest of the world. Deer all over the place...

Leah’s now headed back home, and I’m left to, once again, find a job. Hmmm, better get on top of that 😉

Settling down

Asia ~ Japan ~ Fukuoka & Kurume

… and so it is that I am now renting my very first apartment, all by myself. Well, kinda.

Matt and I arrived in Fukuoka with our first two nights of accommodation booked, with the intention of finding an apartment straight away, or at the very least a cheaper hotel (Osaka was full of them, couldn’t be that hard, right?). Wrong! Fukuoka does not have cheap business hotels, the hotel we had found was the cheapest there was (and it was still a fair bit more than the hotels in Osaka). We spent our fist couple of days wandering around, determined to stumble upon a cheap hotel. In reality all we achieved was an amazing number of blisters and a thorough understanding of the backstreets of Fukuoka city. We quickly realised we needed to book a few more nights at our current hotel, but were only able to book 1 more night – the next night was the beginning of Obon. “Ahh, it’s ok, we’ll just have to pay a bit more at another hotel”, we thought. Wrong! The whole town was booked out.

Fukuoka's manmade beach

Ikeda’s to the rescue! Luckily for us, my host family from Kurume was more than willing to put us up, and so we headed out to Kurume. Whilst in Kurume, we were fed the most delicious foods by my host mum and my host sister Sawako helped us in our search for an apartment. She took us back into the city, to a company that rents furnished apartments by the month (not a common practice here), and helped us sort out an apartment. Our apartment finder was Chinese, so between the limited English, Chinese and Japanese, we all communicated, and we now have a place to live.

Octopus for sale at the supermarket

After the apartment searching was done, we have a few days to lap it up at the Ikeda’s before venturing out on our own. As it is so incredibly hot over here (not so much hot, but humid), we haven’t really been stirring before dark. But after dark I took Matt out for bike rides around town, showing him all the places I used to hang out as an innocent 15 year old exchange student. A lot of the places are still there, but the town itself has changed considerably – the biggest change would have been “Ichi-Ban-Gai”, the main shopping strip – a new super mall has opened up on the outskirts of town, and as a result Ichi-Ban-Gai is all but dead, empty shops and not too many people about. Wednesday came about, bringing with it the opportunity to join Naoko’s calligraphy class with some of the ALT’s (foreign Assistant Language Teachers) from Kurume. As usual I started out with good intentions of what to write, by the end both Matt and I were drawing pretty little pictures with our calligraphy brushes.

Having dinner with Chris, an ALT from my time

On Thursday we headed to Kitakyushu to where Sawako is living, to see the fireworks festival. The festival has been going for quite a few years, and involves fireworks going off from either side of the bay. The fireworks themselves were deemed “short” by my host dad – they only went for 1.5 hours! After the fireworks, we headed back to an izakaya – a small hole in the wall bar – to chat to the bar tender about potential jobs in the area. Not many available it would appear…

Little girl watching the hanabi in her yukata

Sawako helped us move into our new apartments on Sunday. As the girl, I got the “safer” upstairs apartment – I’m not sure I got the better deal, the stairs are a killer, really. Must not drink and then attempt those stairs, could be disastrous. The apartment itself is great – small but contains everything I need. I even have a loft! Comes complete with free internet and cable TV – problem is you can’t use both at the same time – I’m working hard on that one.

The main room in my apartment

Since moving in, we have been exploring the area. We both have bikes (I inherited mine from an ALT who recently left Kurume, Matt has rehomed an abandoned bike from a previous tenant of our apartments) and have been using them non-stop. We are only about a 10min ride to Hakata, the main station in Fukuoka, and about a 15min to Tenjin, the other main station in Fukuoka. Great fun, but must be done after dark (due to the extremely strong sun and my lack of sunscreen). 100 yen shops are featuring alot in our travels (have basically furnished the apartment entirely from the high quality $2 shops). Next step – JOBS!

Take care all. I’m now here till at least Christmas – feel like visiting?

Old Russian Jeeps and 13 hour buses

Asia ~ China ~ Beijing & Mongolia ~ Ulan Baator

Where to begin? Once again, I’ve been lazy about updating my blog – my excuse? I’m in holiday mode!!! Last week, we headed off to Mongolia via train – we had ‘soft sleeper’ (first class), but it was an old train – NO AIR CONDITIONING!!! It was horrible! Couldn’t even have the window open (our fan broke on both trips) as the sand from all the deserts comes in, something we didn’t learn until after the first trip… When we arrived in Ulan Baator (Mongolia), after the train trip, the very first thing I wanted was to have a shower. For the past 13 hours, there had been sand and dust slowly pouring into my hair all night. Alas, there was to be no shower for a very very long time…

We wandered into town (had no map, and didn’t understand enough to know what to pay for a taxi, so we just guessed which way to go – my way was the right way in the end!)… After walking about for a couple of hours, we got some directions to where our hostel was supposed to be, and headed that direction (a good 1.5km away). Once there, we still couldn’t find it. Queried at a supermarket, where all the girls went out of their way to help us (they spoke no English, I spoke no Mongolian, we communicated through gestures). Eventually, one of the girls took us to a telephone shop to call the hostel (I had the number written down in my diary). Turns out the number had been disconnected. Hmm. So we found an internet cafe – and after about half an hour of searching, we found that the hostel had moved and not updated it’s address. Off we tumbled again… We never did find the hostel, at about 11.30pm (we had arrived in town at about 8am) we found a hotel for $25 a night and decided it would do – the manager didn’t speak any English, but was very nice, and we collapsed into bed, but not before jumping in the shower and discovering… THERE WAS NO HOT WATER!!! Not only that, but the water was incredibly cold, middle of winter Mongolian type cold (ok, maybe not that cold, the water probably freezes in the middle of winter, but close enough). I had a 3 second sponge shower, then attempted to wash my hair – my head still hurts thinking about that cold water. We ended up staying at the hotel for all of our trip – it was cheap, the people were friendly, and we figured we’d have cold showers no matter what hostel/hotel we choose.

The Trans-Mongolian Train

We spent our days wandering Ulan Baator and marveling at how nice and friendly the people were. Most people were willing to help us find things and were happy to help – despite the desperate lack of a common language. The weather was deliciously cool (coming from hot Beijing), although the sun was nice and strong. We were pleasantly surprised to find that Mongolian ‘supermarkets’ (often just convenience store size) stock many luxury items that Chinese supermarkets don’t, at great prices. Chocolate yogo’s and nutella were the top of Matt’s list, whilst I was in love with the ‘bounty’ chocolate bars and REAL (non-sweet) bread. Yum. Seriously lacking was something we thought would be in abundance – cheese. Turns out we were just looking in the wrong places, and it wasn’t the type of cheese we were expecting, so we didn’t notice it. We also trooped out to the black market – a huge market on the edge of town, selling absolutly everything, from clothing to goats milk, to horse rugs and high heels. Plenty of things to see and people to watch – getting back was harder than anticipated when we realised that we had no idea where any of the mini-busses were going and would have to rely on a taxi driver who spoke no english. Matt saved the day with a sketch of a horse, indicating the statue of a horse in the middle of town. Our taxi driver figured it out straight away and off we went.

The Black Market (Naram Tuul)

The journey back wasn’t as easy our trip there, but it was an experience none-the-less. Instead of booking a train direct from Ulan Baator to Beijing (which would have been expensive, and probably sold out anyway), we caught an overnight train to Zamyn Uud (the Mongolian side of the border). The train itself was nothing special, no fan, no airconditioning, but we did get free cups of tea! We also made friends with a Mongolian guy on his way to visit his son and wife in Singapore – a friendship that turned out to be very handy. Once in Zamyn Uud, we (with the help of our new friend) caught an old russian jeep to cross the border. Once again, I found that being a foreign female helped me – Matt was squished in the back with about four or five other guys, while I had the front to myself! The jeep drove us to the border, where we waited in line for about an hour and a half. Although everyone jumped out of the jeep and wandering around, I was happy to stay in (the sun was incredibly strong, I’m trying so hard not to get burnt) and chat to the driver instead. As the driver spoke no English or Mandarin, and I spoke no Mongolian, all of our conversation was done through gestures. After exhausting my possible topics of conversation (i.e. “I’m tired” and “It’s hot”), the drive got sick of me, and made his younger companion drive while he had a cigarette. Lucky driver #2 also got to chat with me about the weather and my lack of sleep…

Eventually we made it over the border and into Erlian (the Chinese side of the border). Saying bye to our new friend at the bus station (he was going to catch a bus to Beijing – we thought he was crazy, a bus for 10 hours? No thanks!), we headed to the train station. Only to discover that it was a Chinese Holiday (‘Lovers Day’) and no trains were running. Back to the bus station we headed, where we met up with our friend again, and bought tickets for the 10 hour (which was, in reality, 13 hours) sleeper bus to Beijing. After lunch with our Mongolian friend, we boarded the bus to discover that it had no seats – instead, it was full of bunk beds! Reasonablly comfortable (for the average not-tall person), they allowed us (well, me anyway – Matt belongs to the tall category) to get a bit of rest on the trip to Beijing. Arrival in Beijing was pleasant, we now know this city, so getting a taxi was relatively easy, and we were able to grab some McD’s for brekky (it was 6am!) before stumbling into bed…

Me in the old russian jeep

Since our return, we’ve been lazying about and attempting to organise a visa extension for Matt. Many dramas (laws changed on August 1st regarding extensions, making it more difficult), but it appears the extension is now under way. Trains are books, flights are booked, we are leaving Beijing for Shanghai next Friday – yey! Now to get all the last minute shopping done and see all the places I forgot to visit… In between all this, we are still finding ways to truly experience the Chinese culture – Last night we spent the night at a hairdressers, where we all got our hair cut and washed for only 15 yuan (a bit over $2). And no, it wasn’t me and the girls – it was me and the boys who thought up this fabulous way to spend an evening! After the hairdressers, we toddled off to an internet cafe that was packed, where we spent a good two hours playing computer games (Battlefield and other such gun-toting games) with the rest of the under-25 male Chinese population. An interesting night to say the least.

China is getting into gear for the olympics, some-thing we are reminded over and over again each day. On August 8th, we went to the ‘pre-versary’ of the 2008 Olympic Games at Tianamen Square – the 365 day countdown has began! The official theme song ‘We are ready’ was released (you can preview this amazing song here), and advertising can be seen all over the television, on buses, buildings, at McD’s, on billboards – everywhere! Perhaps my favourite television add is one which features a number of smiling people doing ‘good deeds’, such as stopping for pedestrians at a pedestrian crossing and holding a lift door open for some-one – it seems these adds are trying to ‘train’ the population as to how to behave for the olympics? An amusing ad none-the-less.

And so, we are left with the task of packing up the apartment (ooh, that’s right, need another suitcase!) and getting ourselves down to Shanghai, where we’ll be for a few days, before Hong Kong, and then home! Hope all is well, xoxo