Last week, Korea had a little holiday, called Chuseok. This is like their Thanksgiving. Where families travel across the country and sit in horrible traffic so they can share a day or 2 of traditional food with their uncles, aunts and cousins. It's also gives foreign English teachers, or at least those in public schools a whole week of vacation. That is until 3 hours before your flight your school tells you that since you are going abroad you have to take vacation days, even though the school is completely closed for the week. But that's another story, probably for one of the many blogs out their that complain about Korea until their blue in the face. I will share a few photos, talk about our hike up Mt. Fuji and compare some of the differences between Japan and it's hectic, frantic, mono stylistic neighbor. South Korea
Our trip of 4 guys started smoothly, we all showed up to the airport at exactly the same time...about a hour too early. We caught our first flight to Fukuoka, then we had to re-check our bags for the flight to Tokyo. That's when we hit the road block. Our boy Jake (pictured above) was planning on splitting off from us and doing some hiking in some mountains no one has ever heard of while Matt, Mack and myself summited one of the most famous mountains in the world, Mt. Fuji. Since he was camping, he thought he'd bring some white gas along on the flight so he wouldn't have to search around for it Japan. (That's sensible and wise, but highly illegal.) The agents with Air Nippon were very kind and passive aggressive. They figured they knew Jake had a connecting flight and would cave to their demands. But they were being a little too demanding. Jake's plan was to dump out the gas, check the bag and make the flight. Air Nippon's plan was keep the gas bottles, and the stove. They said even if Jake dumped out the gas it would still smell like gas, which was bad. Now they were making about as much sense as my Principal and his crazy talk about using vacation days when the school's closed.
To quickly end the story,(who like to read, right?) Jake missed the flight, stayed in Fukouka, slept at an Internet cafe, (it's a normal thing to do in Japan.) Then took a night bus to Tokyo, where he met up with the three of us to collect his tent which he had us carry.
We spent a bunch of time comparing the fashion and style on the boys and girls in Tokyo to the boys and girls of Busan. What I realized Is this is like comparing the fashions of South Beach to those of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Tokyoites seemed much more open, expressive, creative, affluent, tanned and original compared to Busanites. Cruising around Shabuya, which is full of shops, malls and boutiques and kids with money we just gawked at all the girls literally dressed like dolls and the kids who looked like goth rockers.
The biggest difference between Tokyo and Busan, is that in Busan everyone dresses the same, more or less and seem timid to express themselves with fashion. The colors are usually dark. The shirts are baggy and colored in an English slogan that probably makes no sense and the shorts are short. That's the style for ladies. For the fellas it's usually A man purse and a shirt with a teddy bear on it...I'm kidding...not really.
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We were lucky enough to be in Tokyo when a Sumo tournament was taking place. These only take place three times a year. We paid 2100yen for some nose bleed seats. But it was still pretty cool. These were some big guys. Especially when in the later rounds. The force that the these guys would crash into each other with is amazing. Sometimes of they would really fight too. Not like a back ally fight, but grabbing, slapping and shoving. They displayed tremendous balance as well. it seemd like one guy was on the verge of being shoved out, only to turn his opponent and shove him out of the ring. Quite a few if the wrestlers weren't actually Japanese. They may have been from Mongolia or Eastern Europe. But in the program they all had Japanese names.
It's a common thing to sleep in a capsule in Tokyo, so that's what we did. It was a capsule hostel, but the name capsule is a little misleading. I didn't feel like an astronaut and i didn't get claustrophobic, it was actually quite spacious, as you can see. This one did eat one of my favorite shirts though.
Over all our trip to Tokyo was cool, but I don't feel like I got the full experience. We went to some of the wrong neighborhoods at the wrong times and ended up walking around the red light district getting propositioned by men from Nigeria and Ghana. They would say thing like, "you like girl, 3000 yen, 90 minutes. You can touch." If it was 3000 yen for the three of us, maybe, but for 1 guy, c'mon. Plus we realized in Japan it's hard to find a real bar. There are big buildings with a bunch of little neon signs reading "Passion," "Heaven" or "Tasteful Pleasure." Sometimes it seemed Japan was selling nothing but sex, or at least the company of a lady for a few minutes.
One major reason for the Japan trip was to climb Mt Fuji. But it wouldn't be easy logistically because we were outside of "climbing season." Which is only July and August, when bus companies run direct buses to the highest station on the mountain, then have return buses a few hours later. Our trip included a bus ride, then a futile attempt at hitchhiking at dusk, then paying a taxi 2000yen each for the 30 minute ride to the 5th station, where the hiking starts. 2000yen isn't bad for a taxi, considering the bus one way is 1500 from the same place.
Our plan was to hike the mountain starting when we should be going to bed if it were a regular night back in the ROK, that way we would summit right before sunrise. We ended up starting the hike around 10:15pm. I wanted to start a little later but it's hard to stay still when you see groups of other hikers hitting the trail. I figured it was better to stay low as long as possible where it's warm, rather than have to wait for 2 hours at 13000 feet for the sunrise.
To describe the hike in 1 word I would use: Delirious, or maybe patient, or slow. One of those would work. We had 7 hours to climb about 1500M in the dark, when my body would rather be sleeping. It ended up being a very long and tedious hike filled with many, many breaks. We were told all the little teahouses that served 6 dollar ramen and 4 dollar coffee were all closed, but they were in fact all open and offered us places to rest, at least outside, about every 20 minutes. So we would climb for 20, then rest for almost the same. Or until we got cold. Then start slowly hiking. We hiked fast enough to stay warm, but not break a sweat. We had a beautiful night and the weather was great actually, considering it was the 20th of September. The only real hiccup was our buddy Matt. Who decided to catch a cold the night before we left for Japan. His lungs weren't cooperating, and mix in the altitude, it was a real struggle. But he's a trooper and made it to the top with us.
After many breaks we reached the summit about 10 minutes before sunrise. Too our surprise there must have been 200 people up there. Since it was so late in the season we were expecting a fraction of that.
The view towards the east was beautiful. And being so high above the clouds after climbing through the night was very rewarding. We stayed up top for about 45 minutes taking pictures, drinking some whiskey and watching the sky light up and the views change. The views of the clouds below were especially cool. They looked liked massive frozen waves. And since we hadn't slept all night our brains were getting pretty silly.
Tommy Lee Jones. He was everywhere. Billboards, vending machines, buses maybe. It reminded me and everyone else about Bill Murray's character in Lost In translation. Where an older actor comes to Japan for a week to make a couple million dollars poising for photos to endorse some whiskey.
We spent the next couple days after Fuji down in Kyoto. First we rested after our long hike and brutal night bus from Tokyo. But we soon got out into the city to take in all it's history, beauty and culture. It seems around every corner was a garden, or craft shop, or park, or temple, or statue, or Geisha, or fake geisha dressed up for tourists.
The thing to do in Kyoto is ride bikes, since it's so flat. We rented bikes for 100yen, which is possibly the greatest deal in Japan. We stared out as a group of three, but Mack got lost after the second temple we visited. he never saw him again until the airport Saturday morning. But he had other Osaka plans with a family friend.
Since neither Matt nor I were super keen on paying 500yen for each little temple or rock garden we just visited one well known temple (and was underwhelmed, I think from all the packages bus tourists that clogged it up) and spent the rest of the day cruising the free parks and all the cool side streets and neighborhoods. What we decided is that there doesn't seem like a poor person or house in Kyoto and there are plenty of beautiful girls on bikes. Which is something that needs to spread through out the world.
Kyoto and and Osaka our about 40 minutes apart by train, but they seem like worlds apart. Kyoto is filled with temples, craft and art shops and green spaces. While Osaka is full of neon, shopping and concrete. But it's still charming in it's own way. We spent our last day here just walking around, eating some of the local food, like takoyaki, which are doughy balls with bits of octopus inside. And Okomanayaki, which is similar to an egg scramble with a bunch of veggies. For our evening entertainment, we started off with our usual bottle of Santori whiskey from 7-11 and a wander about town, looking for places to consume more alcohol. We found more huge buildings offering 75 rooms to spend 90 minutes "chatting with some ladies." Jake and Matt were cheap so we didn't do it...just kidding, Mom.
We did find some fun little bars, full of very drunk Japanese, but nothing earth shattering. We did notice an abundance of little "reggae" shops were selling little treats that we may have dabbled in, though.
I found where every cool vintage shirt in in America ends up, Osaka. For sale for 30 dollars.
