Japan
I've been dreading writing this because it is going to take forever. So i've decided to describe one day of my trip per day to keep down the workload and keep up the suspense.
The trip actually started the day before when I went to Busan, on the South coast of Korea. I was going to catch the ferry there the following day at 9am so I figured it was better to spend the night there rather than rush in the morning. It also gave me a chance to meet up with 3 Korean girls I met on my trip to Taiwan. I arrived in Busan around 5pm. We went to Outback for dinner, then shopping, then to a board game cafe, where we played Clue for 2 hours, along with some other games. Koreans live with their parents until they are married, so they usually don't spend any time with their friends at home. Hence the board game cafe. After that 2 of the girls went home while the 3rd girl took me to meet her boyfriend who, oddly, turned out to be someone I knew. He used to be the doorman at my building. So we hung out for a while (none of these people spoke English, by the way) until around 11, at which time I crashed at the hotel.
I woke up the next day and walked to the ferry terminal. Picked up my tickets and waited around for the ferry to leave. I met a few other foreigners in the waiting room who were going to Japan to clear their visas (you have to leave Korea once every 365 days if you don't work in a university :-) One girl was American and rather nice, but there were also two obnoxious Kiwis that drove me nuts on the ferry ride. I also met a couple from England who had been travelling around SE Asia for 10 months. We talked on the ferry and realized we were all at the same hotel. When we arrived in Fukuoka about noon, we went our separate ways but decided to meet at 5 o'clock for dinner and night out. I spent the afternoon looking at two temples in Fukuoka and reserving my train tickets for the next week. I came back to the hotel about 4:30pm and was stood up by all but the two Brits. We went out for tempura and udon before going downtown to check out the neon jungle and a few bars. Nothing much exciting happened because we read the map wrong and were in the wrong part of town. The British girl was a little ill so we went back to the hotel where we found the American girl who had passed out in the afternoon and so missed out meeting. We exchanged girls and headed out again for a few hours, trying 3-4 different Japanese pubs. We came back to the hotel about midnight, exchanged contact info, and separated. I went to sleep about 1. End of Day One
My pictures server seems to be down. When it returns I'll tell you which pictures are from the first day. Any Questions?
The trip actually started the day before when I went to Busan, on the South coast of Korea. I was going to catch the ferry there the following day at 9am so I figured it was better to spend the night there rather than rush in the morning. It also gave me a chance to meet up with 3 Korean girls I met on my trip to Taiwan. I arrived in Busan around 5pm. We went to Outback for dinner, then shopping, then to a board game cafe, where we played Clue for 2 hours, along with some other games. Koreans live with their parents until they are married, so they usually don't spend any time with their friends at home. Hence the board game cafe. After that 2 of the girls went home while the 3rd girl took me to meet her boyfriend who, oddly, turned out to be someone I knew. He used to be the doorman at my building. So we hung out for a while (none of these people spoke English, by the way) until around 11, at which time I crashed at the hotel.
I woke up the next day and walked to the ferry terminal. Picked up my tickets and waited around for the ferry to leave. I met a few other foreigners in the waiting room who were going to Japan to clear their visas (you have to leave Korea once every 365 days if you don't work in a university :-) One girl was American and rather nice, but there were also two obnoxious Kiwis that drove me nuts on the ferry ride. I also met a couple from England who had been travelling around SE Asia for 10 months. We talked on the ferry and realized we were all at the same hotel. When we arrived in Fukuoka about noon, we went our separate ways but decided to meet at 5 o'clock for dinner and night out. I spent the afternoon looking at two temples in Fukuoka and reserving my train tickets for the next week. I came back to the hotel about 4:30pm and was stood up by all but the two Brits. We went out for tempura and udon before going downtown to check out the neon jungle and a few bars. Nothing much exciting happened because we read the map wrong and were in the wrong part of town. The British girl was a little ill so we went back to the hotel where we found the American girl who had passed out in the afternoon and so missed out meeting. We exchanged girls and headed out again for a few hours, trying 3-4 different Japanese pubs. We came back to the hotel about midnight, exchanged contact info, and separated. I went to sleep about 1. End of Day One
My pictures server seems to be down. When it returns I'll tell you which pictures are from the first day. Any Questions?