A blog post about our recent trip to Japan and Seoul (South Korea), as always planned and orchestrated by Amy...
The "main meal" for this trip was a week-long bike tour found by Amy that combined cycling + hiking in the Kumano Kodo area of Japan (the peninsula south of Osaka that contains Nara and Wakayama). She decided that if we were going to go all the way to Japan we should tack on some extra days in the cities, so our itinerary included visits to Tokyo, Kyōto, Osaka, and a side trip to Seoul (which is quite close as the crow flies to southern Japan). Our friends Alyson and her husband Chris came along with us for most of this shindig (everything except our final visit to Korea).
Saturday+Sunday: we flew from Boston to Detroit on Delta airlines, then from Detroit to Tokyo's Hareda airport. The flight was decent, we were able to survive it without any major hassles, and we eventually rescued our bags and made it through customs.
Our first stop after the ATM was a vending machine to buy a "Suica" card, an IC card that you can load with cash and then use to pay for transit; definitely a good idea to grab one of those. Train ride back from the airport to the city center was fine, then we had another subway ride from Shinagawa station to Shibuya station (the stop nearest our hotel). Shibuya has a very "Times Square"-like quality to it, crowded at all hours and ridiculously crowded during rush hour intervals. Had to walk the last 15 mins with our bags in the rain, ugh ... we were pretty beat by the time we finally got to the hotel. Synced up with Chris and Alyson and then hit the sack (whew).
Monday: turns out that is somewhat tricky to buy bullet train tickets ahead of time from the USA, you have to go through an aggregator (of which there are a plethora), and you can easily be disappointed if you don't reserve ahead at all, so as a compromise we decided we would buy our seats as soon as we arrived in the country. After some breakfast and coffee, we walked over to Shibuya station and with a little detective work we located the JR (Japan Rail) office, where a helpful human being was able to sell us most of the tickets we needed: Tokyo to Kyōto, then Kyōto to Shirahama (the town where our bike tour kicked off). It was a relief to get that out of the way early.
After that we decided to wander and explore our neighborhood a bit -- the weather as decent and it was good to just meander around and see what things looked like. We had fun shopping at "Tokyo Hands", a local store with wide range of interesting things to buy:
We then did eventually make our way to a store that I'd picked out earlier that sells furoshiki wrapping cloths, we bought a few things there. Amy then was able to locate a smallish udon place in the neighborhood, so we had a tasty lunch. Wandering:
Shopping:
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A digression on Japanese convenience stores ("konbini") -- we relied heavily on these things during our visit, they were fantastic. In the USA the main offerings in convenience stores are things like soda, candy bars, potato chips -- in Japan they have all sorts of other food, some of it quite decent. We had breakfast from the 7-11's in Tokyo, bought a couple bottles of wine in Kyoto, and used them for all sorts of other things (ATM, adding money to Suica cards, and so on).
In the afternoon after a bit of down time at the hotel we lit out again and made our way to the train station and then onto Nokashira line and headed west to Mitaka to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum. Tickets to this museum are very inexpensive (maybe a buck or two) but ridiculously hard to get, they sell out almost instantly for a given day when they come on line. Alyson went to a lot of trouble to get up at the designated weird hour and jump online to order our tickets (she actually used a collection of computers so as to make sure at least one got through), yikes.
In spite of being an hour's ride on the train, Mitaka is actually still solidly inside the Tokyo metropolitan city limits (the so-called Greater Tokyo region is even more enormous, it has 40m residents and includes a bunch of other quite large cities that most people would consider distinct, such as Yokohama).
We were there a bit early, so we wandered around in a local park while we waited for our timed (4pm entrance) tickets. The building that houses the museum was purpose-built for it, so it includes a lot of nice little details on the exterior and interior that have nods to the Miyazaki films.
[No photographs allowed on the inside BTW]
The museum itself was fun; not the sort of place you would want to spend a whole day at, but it was good for an hour or so. The most interesting parts for me were a room where they had some original artwork from the film "The Boy and the Heron", and then another room where they'd collected a bunch of artifacts from Miyazaki's drawing/art studio.
For dinner we headed over to the Shinjuku station area where Chris and Alyson had a recommendation for a place in the oddly named "Piss Alley" where you could get good yakitori; getting through the station there was an intense experience, I don't think I have ever been to a more crowded station of any kind.
Tuesday: we decided to visit the Tsukiji fish market area, and we had a good recommendation for a sushi place in the area, so we decided to head there for breakfast (what the heck!). Tsukiji used to be the main fish market for Tokyo (including wholesalers, etc) but it finally outgrew the space, so they moved the fish-buyuing and fish-selling parts to a less tourist-friendly location -- however the touristy stuff that had accumulated in the Tsukiji area still remains, so it is a fun place to visit (lots of food stalls, etc).
The designated sushi place was a little tricky to find, it was in a back alley without any real signage, but we did eventually locate it, and we were rewarded with an excellent meal. First time for me eating sea urchin, which I enjoyed. Amy (alas) is not a big sushi eater, so she made due with other things (miso soup and Japanese omelette).
From there we took a bus a bit to the south to Shinonome, where we had tickets to see Team Lab Planets, a big interactive art museum/installation thing. I had been anticipating something like Meow-Wolf in Santa Fe, but this was its own different thing, artworks more abstract/electronic/dynamic and on a bigger scale (the internal architecture of the place was part of the art I think). Lots of people there, but due to the scale of the place it didn't feel overcrowded. It was a lot more fun than I expected :-). Photos:
Yes, that is water Amy is standing in!
Garden of the mirror-coated space pods...
Dinner at local ramen place near hotel in Shibuya.
Wednesday: Snow and sleet, really vile weather this morning. We layered up as much as we could and trooped over to see Sensō-ji in the Asakusa neighborhood, this is one of the largest and oldest Buddhist temples in Japan. We were all very cold after exploring there (I was wishing that I had brought my down jacket), so we stopped to warm up in a cafe a bit to the east. From there we walked to Kappabashi street, an shopping area that is packed with interesting kitchen-supply and cooking stores. We walked and window-shopped for a while, but it was just to cold and snowy to spend a lot of time there, so we high-tailed it back to the subway. We went at that point to the Mitsukoshi department store and visited their food court for lunch, that was fun (we ordered salad and fresh rolls). Many of the big department stores in Japan have a big area in the first floor basement where they sell food -- usually pretty fancy (and not terribly cheap), but fun to shop in.
Senso-ji in the snow:
After lunch we then hustled over to the Tokyo Imperial Palace for a walking tour. Our guide turned out to be a very pleasant older woman from Yokohama; we wandered around the grounds (weather finally starting to warm up) and looked at what there was to see, while she told us about the history of the site. Royal palace construction has always been done with wood in Japan, which means that there isn't a whole lot to see nowadays in the way of actual buildings -- the palaces have burned down many times over the centuries, and when everything was incinerated during World War II they decided not to recreate what was there, but rather build a smaller imperial residence on a different section of the grounds.
For dinner this was our "nice restaurant" evening in Tokyo; we had a meal at Jinbocho Gokita, which I would describe as serving a sort of "Yakitori reimagined" fusion cuisine. It was tasty although maybe a bit too elaborate. The return trip to the hotel was insanely crowded, there were unbelievable numbers of people in the Shibuya station (most likely due to the national holiday the next day).
Thursday: Off to Kyōto! After checking out of the hotel we decided to take a taxi ride to Shinagawa station so as to avoid struggling too much with luggage on the subway in rush hour. That was actually kind of fun; it turned out to be our one and only real car ride while in Japan. The driver went part of the way on an elevated highway, so we had good views of the area.
A Kyoto temple:
In the station we had some minor transit-related mayhem; almost got onto the wrong train. Oddly, for the bullet train (shinkansen) the window of time when the doors are open is very small, so if you do make a mistake you don't have a lot of time to correct it.
Train ride was pleasant and hassle-free; we arrived in Kyōto at the appointed hour without any trouble (lunch on the train: "ekiben"). From there we hauled our luggage to the place we were staying, Guesthouse Nobi. It was too early to check in, so we headed off to explore the city a little. The national holiday (spring equinox) actually made it hard to find cafes that were open, so we limited ourselves to snacks.
Ekiben ("train station bento box"):
Later in the afternoon we had a "Geisha" walking tour . We visited the four different Geisha "districts", each corresponding to a specific school or association of geishas, and learned a good deal about that aspect of Kyoto history and culture.
For dinner due to all the holiday closures we actually wound up eating in a soba place in the basement food court of the train station (sounds less than great, but in Japan there are actually some good options in train stations). Very tired after that, back to the guest house to collapse.
Friday: Amy and I got up early so as to make it to our "early bird" bike tour, which required a half hour train ride west from the city center. No transit problems to speak of, we arrived on time and met up with our cycling tour guide, an affable American expat named Peter. He had some interesting perspectives on living in Japan, having arrived in the early 90's and then stayed on to become an English teacher and later on a university professor. We met the other folks on the tour, a young American couple (both living overseas), a family from Austin TX, and a young Australian woman. The tour kicked off in the neighborhood of Arashiyama, which I would describe as having a sort of "Hamptons" or "Santa Barbara" feel (the sort of place you live if you have a lot of money and want a house with a big garden). We cycled for a bit and then explored the Bamboo Forest there.
The forest itself is quite a bit smaller than I had expected, but the bamboo is fun to look at (also extremely instagrammy, even when we were there early in the morning). With further bike rides we visited both a small Shinto shrine and a larger Buddhist temple. Our guide was very informative on the subject of religion in Japan; I got a much better sense for the role that the two churches play. He also taught us the proper ritual for making an offering at a Shinto shrine, which has a series of very specific steps. The particular shrine we visited was actually devoted to the Shinto god of hair, so this was the place to go if you want to offer up a hair-related request to the gods. The buddhist temple was also interesting; a highlight there was a large tapestry depicting the death of the Buddha (which is marked/celebrated in March).
We then cycled out into the rice fields surrounding the area and got a sense for what those sorts of areas look like.
... and another temple visit:
We eventually parted company and took the train back to Kyoto center. In the afternoon Amy and Alyson had a lined up a small class on Japanese silk weaving; Chris and had I decided to opt out. I took a look at the kitchen equipment in our rental and decided it was goof enough that I would take a stab at preparing dinner, so my next step was to embark on a trip to the grocery store.
The store was fun, I got to putter and explore and work on tracking down the weirder ingredients I needed for my planned dishes (stir-fried Asian eggplant, sauteed tsatsuma greens). English signage very thin, I had to rely a good deal on Google translate's "lens" feature. On the down side it took me quite a while to get there and back, the bus connections were not that great (lots of walking).
Saturday: Short train ride down to Inari to visit the Shinto shrines there (shrineplex? shrine-o-rama?). Quite crowded but still interesting, we got a bit of a walk up the mountain and took in the "thousand tori gates". Lunch at "Kanako", a good pick by Amy -- we had udon and tempura in very nice setting in the back room with a view of the (small but well tended) garden.
Took the afternoon off (at least I did), that was nice -- it was good to nap and vegetate for a bit (feeling kind of walked out at this point). For dinner I cooked again, made a bunch of veggies and a pork/mushroom/onion stir fry.
Shrine visit photos. You can see the crowds in this photo, very heavy. Inari features a series of tori gates lined up in a sort of alley or path that you hike through -- this continues all the way up the mountainside.
Sunday: Off to the Kyoto main rain station to head to Shirahama. Our journey ride was in two parts, a "local" train to Osaka, then a switch to another train to get to Shirahama. The local part proved to be straightforward, but we had some nervous moments trying to make our connection -- we knew that it left from platform 21, but for the life of us we couldn't figure out how to find that part of the station. Confusingly there were actually little signs on the wall announcing the existence of platform 21, but with no arrows or indicators showing how to get there. Gah! Stressful.
Finally Alyson went and asked a lady who was running a bagel stand where to find it and she was able to give us enough directions (including going down two floors, across a couple hundred meters, then up two floors) that we found it. Whew.
Train ride to Shirahama was uneventful once we finally got on. In Shirahama Amy and I had an almost comically crowded bus ride on the shuttle to the hotel -- survived that, then met up with our bike tour. Two Japanese guides: Taka-san (who rode with us) and Yoko-san (who drove the tour van and managed other logistics); the other riders were a couple from Virginia and a couple from Brisbane Australia, so not a huge group (which is a good thing).
In the afternoon we did a short (10k ish) shakedown ride in the Shirahama area just to make sure the bikes were adjusted and working properly. Photos from the shakedown ride:
A few pics from our kickoff group dinner:
Monday: first real ride day of the tour. Starting in Shirahama we rode east and up into the hills, eventually connecting with the Tonda river. Long stretch of river valley riding, not too demanding. We had a final climb at the 30k mark or so, up very steeply, to a pass/saddle (couple hundred meters climbing, maybe 7% grade or so? whew).
Stopped for lunch (chicken rice bowl, very tasty), then left our bikes with Yoko-san and laced up our hiking boots. Or rather Amy and I laced up our boots, I think everyone else had opted to hike in sneakers.
This was our first taste of the actual Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trails; they are fairly established trails, plenty of stone steps and masonry to support a large number of hikers. The forested areas are mostly evergreen trees, Japanese cedar and cypress, very orderly looking somehow. Where the trail does through a town it can sometimes sort of evaporate into something that looks like a sidewalk, then picks up again once it gets through the developed area.
The hike was pretty substantial considering that we had biked all morning, something like 10k with a fair number of hills. We eventually came down out of the mountains and into the small town of Takahara, where we split up -- half stayed in one small hotel and the remainder in another.
Beach outside the Shirahama hotel:
The hotel onsen was small (expected given the hotel size) and a bit on the crowded side; Chris and I had to sort of elbow our way into the showers and then the hot soak area. Still a lovely way to end a hiking and biking day, however. The dinner was excellent, food very carefully prepared and tasty. We slept like logs (at least I certainly did).
Tuesday: this was my favorite riding day for the trip, the biking was really amazing. Up at 6, breakfast at 6:30 -- another good spread, this time with ample coffee (yay); we were packed and ready to ride before eight. We rejoined the other folks on the tour and struck out on our bikes.
Easy-ish ride for a few kilometers, then a stop at a cool little wood-carving shop on the way, single old guy running the show. Mostly cedar items, bowls and cups.
Gentle up for a few more klicks, and then we turned off onto a much smaller road and began a ridiculously steep climb for about a half kilometer: 10% grade (eek). That's about the limit of my climbing ability, I had to work hard just to keep moving. The road finally leveled off, then entered a fairly long tunnel (couple of kilometers). At the other end we emerged onto this really nice mountain road -- very windy, almost entirely devoid of traffic, very twisty, tons of debris (small rocks and sticks), so you had to bike carefully. Lots of up and down. Chris had a flat tire at one point, so we had to stop and get that taken care of -- Bill, Chris, Taka-san, and I all pitched in.
The ride finished with a long downhill section, an exciting descent given all the twists in the road; lunch at a sort of meeting place / parking area near the trail. We ditched our bikes at that point and began our hike, which was a bit less interesting than the day before (not that much to see other than a couple of small shrines).
We did at one point reach a nice viewpoint where you could look into the valley below, sights included the enormous tori gate marking the location of the original Kumano Hongu Grand Shrine (this was one of the "big" shrines that formed the set of chief destinations for the pilgrims). This specific one had been built too close to the river, however, and in the 19th century there was a flood that essentially wiped it out. They built the giant gate on the original site to mark the spot, then rebuilt the other parts of the shrine on a spot much higher up from the river.
On the bike ride. I should add that what I'm doing in this photo (taking a picture while in motion riding) is now in fact illegal, due to a recently passed law -- cyclists have to stop before taking a photo, or face a steep fine (ironically, you can take as many pix as you want with your cell phone while driving a car, go figure):
At the shrine:
After a stop for ice cream, we eventually got back on our bikes (urp) and did a final ride, this one to the hotel where we were staying. This was also one of my favorite hotels during the tour ("Sansuikan Kawayu Matsuya"); it was right on a riverbank and had a nice indoor-outdoor onsen setup.
A bit more about the onsen experience: many hotels and resorts have hot-spring baths, and the routines + procedures seem to be the same for all of them -- divided by sex (men in one area, women in another), no clothing or bathing suits permitted. Before going into the soaking pools, you shower off and wash with the soap and shampoo provided. Showers oddly are a seated affair -- you sit on a small stool while washing yourself off; the shower area is one big room, no private cubbies or stalls. For the soak: not a lot of talking, just relaxing in the warm water and enjoying.
The baths have a distinct communal and a sort of "leveling" feeling to them. Lots of people use them, not just a select few; people bring their kids; everyone is wearing the same thing (e.g. birthday suit), there are no clothes or shoes or jewelry to demarcate social or class distinctions, and in particular there is no "premium gold-class" bath for one set of people and "cattle class" bath for the rest, as with so many other things of society these days.
The hot soak tubs range from warm to incredibly hot, and there tends to be a range (and occasionally a cool bath as well, which I definitely appreciate). I thoroughly enjoyed using them, this is a nice memory I will take back from Japan,
Anyhow, this hotel was not super modern, but the rooms were nice (all traditional tatami-style) with good views of the river; the food was buffet style and crowded but the dishes were all tasty. Definitely enjoyed our stay.
Tatami room set up for sleeping (futons assembled):
Wednesday: Busy breakfast, lots of folks there during our meal. Our bike ride today brought us along the small river to where it joined the Kumano river, which we followed down to the coast. Nice tail wind -- felt like we were hardly doing any work at all. The Kumano itself is quite lovely: blue green water, very wide gravel bed, lots of birds (herons stalking and black kites aloft circling).
Lunch at a roadside cafe -- this was one of those places (quite common) where you have to punch your order into a machine (and feed in some cash) if you want to eat -- no human involvement, no credit card. There are (thank goodness) still actual human beings doing the cooking however, and the food they produce is surprisingly good.
Cherry blossoms just starting to come out -- we could see the first beginnings. Sunny and warm but not hot, perfect weather. We finally wound up in the coastal town of Shingu, where we visited another set of shrines and temples. The shrine was perched up on a rock outcropping quite high up, we we had to climb a steep set of stairs to get to it (500 steps, eek).
At the temple there were some interesting ancient trees (oldest was said to be 1000 years old). Also spotted in the parking lot: a guy on a vintage motor scooter apparently doing a doing a ride from Osaka to Kushimoto -- with his cat! He had the feline in a rather small cat carrier strapped to the side (who knew).
Hotel was a bit more modern and with western style beds this time around. For dinner we were set free to roam on our own; we wound up in a very local mom+pop place Toho Chaya a few blocks from the hotel. The older woman who took our order seemed very relieved that I could communicate a bit in rudimentary Japanese, yay.
Coming home from dinner we encountered a big group of softball players (mostly girls but a few boys) also staying at the hotel, that was interesting.
Thursday:
Thursday: breakfast at the hotel, this time accompanied by huge numbers of softball players (in uniform even for the meal). They looked to be about high school age. Luckily we arrived just before the bulk of them turned up, so we were able to get a least a bit of food before the devouring swarm of locusts descended.
A digression on cell phones: for this trip we decided continue our practice of buying data-only e-SIMs instead of trying to arrange for coverage from our carrier (which is an el-cheapo, good for service in the US but worthless outside). That seemed to work very well. We went with Ubigi , which had a 30-day prepaid thing that covered both Japan and Korea, which was just what we needed. Data only means no calls and no text messages to/from your USA number, but we did just fine with email and WhatsApp (owned by Meta, so I boycott it in the USA, but it can be extremely useful overseas). Google maps works really well in Japan, we used it all the time.
Anyhow, we had been eyeing the weather the night before; big blob of rain in the forecast, eek. We wondered whether it would be possible to ride at all, but when we looked at our phones in the morning, it appeared that it would hold off until late afternoon, so we got the OK from Taka-san to do the ride.
The first segment of the ride was through smaller streets, hugging the coastline but staying away from the bigger roads to avoid the trucks and such. We then turned inland and followed a smallish river up to the town of Nachi, which features a set of temples and shrines (what else!) as well as a nice waterfall.
We biked to the base of the shrines and then hiked our way up, lots of climbing -- for whatever reason the monks who created these buildings decided to position them way up on the hillside. Moderate number of other tourists, not overrun by any means.
On the hike up we were behind a couple with three kids, two smallish girls and then the youngest was a boy, who was making no bones about his displeasure with having to hike up the steps -- he would sit down and yell (good set of lungs), they would wait a bit, then they'd pick him up by his arms and haul him up for a while, he would yell again, then they would leave him behind and keep walking, at that point he would hustle to catch up (still yelling), and so on. It was an impressive display of kid willpower (although maybe not the kind of willpower you really wanted to experience first hand).
At that point the weather turned again, and we started to get misting rain, eek. We looked over the shrines and temples, then had lunch at Moudemochi, a nice small restaurant with a peaceful atmosphere and all-veggie food -- we had lovely soba noodles (Alyson had udon) along with an interesting rice ball with a pickled mustard green wrapper. By 12:45 or so it was definitely starting to rain, so we all coalesced back at the visitors center place for ice cream.
At that point it was coming down pretty heavily; Taka-san announced that we could each choose whether to ride or take the bus (turned out there was a very direct bus from outside the visitor's center down to Katsuura, our next town); Chris and I opted for riding, along with Bill and Ann (and Taka-san), and the rest made the intelligent choice and opted for the bus.
I had brought rain gear (boots, jacket, gloves, gaiters); I think I probably got more wet walking to the van and getting my rain gear on than on the ride, it was definitely bucketing at that point. Our group cycled slowly down the road (quite steep) from the shrine area down to the coastal town of Nachi, then along the various roads on the coast south towards the next town, trying to make sure we didn't skid or fall on the wet roads.
Our destination (Hotel Urushima) was a place perched on a small peninsula south of town, sort of clinging to a very rocky/hilly section with lots of outcrops. To get to the main building you actually had to go through a couple of tunnels, and at one point it had a very "James Bond Villain Lair" feel to it with all the cement and bunker-like constructs. We (the bikers, by this time pretty soggy) arrived a good bit before Yoko-san and her van, and well before the bus riders, who had to take a ferry thing from the dock near the train station. We were mostly warm at that point (coldest part of the ride had been in the beginning).
The hotel was great, another one in the same mold as before: slightly older (not brand new), but with decent tatami-style rooms, excellent onsen, and a big and busy buffet dinner+breakfast operation. A few foreign tourists, but mostly Japanese clientele. After checking in we changing into our yukatas and headed off to the onsen. This one was special, it was in a big underground cave-like space (also adding to the James Bond Villain Lair vibe -- it was begging for a sinister control room w/ lounging villain next to a pool filled with piranhas). Very pleasant soak after a cold wet ride.
Slept well that night. The futons they give you in the tatami-style rooms are not especially thick, took some adjusting (although in many places they have extras in the room, so you can double up if there are just two people sleeping).
Friday: last riding day! Weather cleared up thank goodness, we had clear skies again. In the early morning there was a side trip to visit the Katsuura tuna market -- this is apparently a place where they have a lot of coastal tuna fishermen. We took the ferry thing over to the main part of town with Yoko-san and Taka-san and got a good look at the spot where they unload the catch and prep it for auction. This market has been going on for many years, there were photos on the wall showing a similar operation back in the early 1900s. It was a bit sad seeing these enormous beautiful fish laid out cold on the cement; in the videos I have seen of them in the wild, they are fast and fierce predators... oh well.
After that a quick breakfast, then we coalesced in the lobby to drop off our bags with the hotel luggage guy. Weirdly, he was quite late (hardly ever happens in Japan), when he turned up at last we were behind schedule, so by the time we made it into the main part of town we had missed the 9am train and had to wait around for the next one at 10.
Riding back out through the entrance tunnel for the resort:
Katsuura is unfortunately not an especially interesting place in the morning, but we did our best. For this train ride we actually took our bikes (the non-E-bikes) on with us -- this worked well given that the train was not crowded; I think it would have been a non-starter during rush hour.
Once we arrived in Kushimoto we saddled up and started our ride; the plan called for making a big loop, first along the coast northwest, then into the mountains and across the base of the peninsula and finally back down to Kushimoto again. The coastal riding was fun, beautiful scenery. Shortly before we headed inland we passed a big road construction site -- looked like they were putting in a huge new highway of some sort. As we continued on into the mountains we passed a parade of cement trucks going in the opposite direction (no doubt to feed the construction site).
We had lunch at the "Monolith Cafe", a roadside restaurant perched overlooking an enormous stone rock face across a river (very scenic), that was fun.
The remainder of the riding was along river valleys, not too much climbing, lots of good scenery. We eventually rolled back in to Kushimoto and to our hotel, the "Mercure", a large and modern place perched up on a hill overlooking town.
This hotel had (yet another) nice onsen, featuring indoor and outdoor soaking baths, enjoyed that thoroughly. Last dinner with the group, we toasted our trip and shared plans for the rest of our stays.
Very successful bike tour overall -- lots of great rides, minimal mechanical trouble (one flat), just one ride in the rain, a great experience.
Saturday: our plans had us taking train to Osaka ("Kushio Limited Express"), and we discovered that everyone else on the tour was actually on the same train, even though their eventual destinations were elsewhere. We had a pleasant ride, then said goodbye to Chris and Alyson while we headed off to explore the city.
Impressions of Osaka: crowded, heavy shopping scene, lots of emphasis on food. The city also seems to have a more utilitarian, expedient feel than Kyoto in terms of the way the buildings are constructed and things are laid out.
After checking into the hotel we wandered around the Namba area and visited the various shōtengai in the area to see what was on offer. Super crowded! We were hungry for lunch, but just about every restaurant we picked out had a line (eek). Finally we settled on a ramen place and just decided to endure the wait.
In the afternoon Amy went shopping, while I decided to head back to the hotel and relax. Amy had made a good pick with the hotel, it had a little extra space (by Japanese city standards) and a washer/dryer in the room, so we did some critically needed laundry. We also made a visit again to the main train station to buy reserved-seat tickets for the airport express train the following morning.
For dinner we had a similar experience as with lunch -- long lines for any sort of restaurant with Google reviews... so we finally just wound up going to a neighborhood izakaya and having small plates for dinner.
Sunday: Off to Seoul! The express train to the Kansai airport was a good pick (the local takes a couple of hours, express 45 minutes), so we arrived at the airport with enough time to take it easy. The plane ride also went smoothly, and by around mid-afternoon we were at Gimpo airport in the Seoul suburbs. We purchased transit cards ("T-money") and embarked on the process of figuring out the train system (which went well -- they have good trains in Seoul, comparable to the ones in Japan).
Amy had picked a hotel in the Insadong neighborhood; after checking in we had a couple of hours to wander and explore that area -- it was fun, they have a pedestrian shopping street that is very artsy / craftsy and has a lot to see. We also ducked into the Seoul Museum of Kimchi (who knew?) which is small but a good way to spend 45 minutes.
Dinner (vegan prix fixe) at "A Flower Blossom on Rice", a well-reviewed place in the neighborhood.
View from the hotel:
Monday: Off to the palace! After breakfast we walked over to the royal compound, arriving right when it opened at 9. On a whim I decided to rent the audio guide, which turned out to be key, since there were essentially no signs at all on any of the buildings. The palace area was a mixed bag -- huge stone and wood buildings, elaborately decorated, but very sparse and austere. From the audio guide we learned that various bits had been either destroyed by fire (and later maybe rebuilt) or repurposed/changed during the Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945.
From there we moved on to the National Folk Museum of Korea, not far up the street to the north. Some nice and slickly produced exhibits there: historical tools and dress, a look at the seasons and the traditional activities and festivals, assorted bits about work, family, marriage, and so on. Rice was and still is very important to Korea, lots of daily life activities and traditions revolved around it.
One of the most interesting parts of the museum dealt with traditional Korean paper, "hanji", which is made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree. The tree is native to Asia and grows well in the mountains, definitely different from the trees you see in America. The bark is pulped and made into a slurry, which is then coated onto bamboo mat trays or forms. The exhibits showed all sorts of things made from the paper, including rainwear and umbrellas (the paper is oiled) and then string/cord/rope (paper twisted to form it), as well as wicker baskets and such (made from the string). There was an interesting video in which art restoration experts at the Louvre talked about what a great conservation material it made.
From the museum we wandered to the east from there and picked out a restaurant there, lunch was a stir-fried pork set meal with rice and lots of banchan. Yum.
Navigating in Seoul: in our week-long trip to Japan, we used Google maps almost constantly, both on my laptop ahead of time and the app on our phones while we were on the go. We had heard ahead of time that Google Maps "doesn't work" (sic) in Korea (apparently due to government restrictions of some sort? security risks? restrictions on mapping data and national security regulations?), so we were ready to grit our teeth and go without... but in fact the app turned out to be much more usable than we thought. Although it can't give you accurate turn-by-turn walking directions, the directions via public transit are just fine. Once you arrive at a transit stop, the app will indicate very roughly where you need to go by foot, you just need to pick out the specific streets.
In the afternoon Amy had booked us a food tour; around 2:45 we met up with our guide, Chris. He spoke perfect American English, turns out he spent a lot of time in the USA (parents went to grad school at UT in Austin) and then went to an American college as well. Other folks on the tour: four young guys from Germany, and four young guys from Denmark, all of them maybe in their late 20's early 30's -- genial crew.
We started off at one of the food markets in the area, Gwangjang Market. First tasting was at a dumpling place; fairly tasty but nothing earth shattering. We had decided not to go for the optional alcoholic drinks package (everyone else did), but we got to see what they were consuming: Makgeolli, "young rice wine", a very odd-looking potion indeed, looks like milk, slightly carbonated and a bit sweet? weird.
After that mung bean pancakes, which were quite tasty, plus a "surprise" dish of beef carpaccio (Amy and I definitely did not partake in that). From there, it was rice cakes, "mini sushi" (more like veggie sushi) and (ulp) a dish of of live octopus sashimi, very glad not to get anywhere near that (one of the young men from Denmark said "This would most definitely be illegal in Denmark").
After that we had a somewhat peculiar weird rice drink (very sweet), and our guide collected donuts (delicious). We then walked west back to Insadong, which was kind of pleasant, winding up in a tea room for a final cup of tea.
The dumpling place:
Tuesday: final day in Seoul. I have to admit that I was kind of vacationed out at this point, I felt more like sitting around in the hotel room than doing anything else! Amy still had some energy/stamina and wanted to go shopping, so I dragged myself up off the couch and followed her. We visited the big Lotte department store, which was fun. It had a very similar feel to the places we visited in Japan.
Dinner at a local place in Insadong, noodle soup and several kinds of dumplings; good food at very reasonable prices. While were were there a bunch of folks arrived to eat who had clearly been out protesting (they were holding signs and hats and such); the big political event in Korea at the moment is the impeachment of president Yoon, and there have been big pro-Yoon and anti-Yoon protests happening all during the week. I supposed even protesters get hungry, however.
Wednesday: final travel day -- train to Incheon airport, flight from Incheon back to Tokyo Narita, long layover, and then final flight back to Boston. Whew!
It was a good trip overall, lots of new experiences. I can't say that I am super eager to spend more time in the big Japanese cities, but I would love to go back to spend more time exploring the countryside at some point. Maybe when I have spent another year or two learning Japanese :-).
