Over New Year's I had about 2 weeks off, so I went to Seoul for a week, and to Tokyo for a few days.
I went to Seoul with my friend Lana, who's aunt lives there. We left on December 24th, around 9am, and took the bus to Osaka. We had bought a package train and ferry deal from Osaka to Seoul, which was cheaper than flying. From Osaka we took a train to Shimonoseki in southern Japan, and then took the overnight ferry to Korea, arriving in Pusan the next morning. Then we took a train to Seoul, and finally arrived after a day and a half of travel.
It was freezing cold in Seoul. Somehow I didn't think about how much farther north it was than where we live in Japan, so I didn't pack any pants (just tights and leggings with sweater dresses and what not). Lana says she told me it would be really cold, but... it's debatable. We did a lot of shopping though, since things are so cheap in Korea. We saw two movies. Cost of a movie in Himeji (not even Tokyo, but Himeji, a pretty small city): 20 bucks (1800 yen). Cost of a movie in Seoul: 6 dollars. We saw Australia, the new Baz Luhrmann movie. I didn't really have any desire to see it, but it was actually really good. We also saw Twilight, another movie I had not desire to see (this is how cheap these movies were) but which I also enjoyed.
Those of you who know me (which I guess is everyone, because I'm pretty sure my blog doesn't have much of a following beyond my family and friends) know I can sometimes be a slightly picky eater ;) I wasn't sure how I was going to do with Korean food. I realized I'd never actually had it before. The first few days we were there, Lana's aunt was preparing all these meals for us, and I didn't want to be rude, so I made a real effort to try everything. I can't honestly say I enjoyed it, but Lana's aunt was being so hospitable, I didn't want to hurt her feelings.
We arrived on Christmas day, which was Thursday. From then until Saturday night I ate nothing but Korean food. Lana's aunt was accompanying us around the city, and she took us to a bunch of restaurants. Saturday night we went out for Chinese food. It was very different from American Chinese food, and I assume it was more authentic, seeing as we were much closer to China. I had been feeling kind of queasy all afternoon, a fact I attributed to an unpalatable lunch and a ride on the second deck of a double-decker city tour bus. The Chinese food didn't help matters (I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it). That night I got so sick. I was up half the night vomiting, and the next day I couldn't keep food down. I spent Sunday alternately sleeping, moaning and chewing on a bit of bagel Lana's aunt scrounged up (I think the first bread I had eaten since arriving in Korea-which is a big deal for someone like me, who's diet consists 99% of bread products). By Sunday night I was able to be vertical for more than a few seconds without feeling like I was going to pass out. But for the rest of the week I was unable to go near Korean food (or really any food). I mean, literally go near it. I couldn't look at the table when Lana's aunt put food out. For the next four days I lived on mini loaves of molasses bread and sweet butter from Outback Steakhouse (Lana wanted to go, and I was glad of an opportunity to eat Western food. However, my appetite hadn't really returned, and there was no simple pasta dish (they had all been Korean-ified) and so I ended up ordering fettucine alfredo, not what my stomach needed. I ate maybe a quarter of it. It was really good but my stomach wasn't very happy about it. But they gave us all these loaves of bread and butter to take home, so I subsisted on those for the rest of the week).
Other than that, we did a little sightseeing. We went to two palaces and N. Seoul tower, which is up on a hill and has a great view of the city. Beneath the tower, there is a teddy bear museum
that had dioramas of Korean life throughout history. After that we spent another afternoon shopping. There is a big department store, something like nine stories tall, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. Each floor is dedicated to a different thing (women's clothes, men's clothes, accessories, shoes, home goods, food court, souvenirs, etc.) The layout is nothing like department stores back home. For one thing, everything is packed much more tightly into the space. It's not big and open like department stores back home. It's like carts in an outdoor flea market stacked practically on top of one another, but it's inside, and they are little stores, not carts. The aisles snake around like a maze. I got separated from Lana and her aunt a few times, which was a little frightening because I know zero Korean, and, I realized the first time this happened, I don't know her aunt's name, her address, or even what part of the city she lives in. And my cell phone didn't work over there. So pat on the back for me.
Shopping in Korea was a little bit of a blow to my ego. It's pretty hard to shop in Japan, because the women are so much smaller. I've never been, like, a size 2, but I'm not that big, so I've never really had a problem finding clothes that fit back home. But in Asia, it's like I'm morbidly obese. I wear a size 8 1/2 shoe, which I think would be about a 25 or 26 in Japanese sizes. The largest I can ever find is a 24, which feels like a 7. I haven't even tried to buy pants (which is how I ended up wearing leggings so often). and it's next to impossible to find shirts that can fit my shoulders (actually, that was a problem back home too). But in this store in Korea, it was worse. They only had smalls and mediums, if they had sizes at all. A lot of the clothes were simple "one size fits all," which I don't understand, because there are fat people in Korea (more than I've seen in Japan). The large sizes were in a special plus-size section in the basement. Ouch.
So overall it was an up and down trip. I am glad I've seen Seoul. But I much prefer Japan. One thing I really hadn't counted on was how much culture shock I experienced in Korea. I guess I didn't think I would, because I've been living outside my own culture for a while now. But in hindsight, I think I experienced some pretty bad culture shock, and, in the second half of the trip, it manifested itself as the nausea I continued to feel even after the food-related sickness had ostensibly ended (or at least was a contributing factor to it).
So, Lana and I left Korea on the 31st, at around 8 in the morning, took the train to Pusan, the high-speed ferry to Hakata, and the train to Himeij, before barely making the last bus back to Yamasaki and arriving at 10:30 on New Year's Eve. We had planned on going to Osaka (our tickets were good that far) to celebrate New Year's there, but we were so tired from traveling, that we just went home. I ushered in 2009 by making macaroni and cheese and skyping with my parents. Not a particularly exciting New Year's.
Here are the Korea pictures.
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