A Weekend in Japan Part II

After finishing up a good day in Kobe, where we also happened to find a place that was giving away free hot tea, we took the railway back to Osaka.

Japan Railways sell passenger tickets at discounted prices if you buy a few thousand of them at once. This has spawned a small industry of special retailers who buy large quantities and resell them to the public at a small profit. We bought our tickets from this shop and they turned out to be about 2 dollars cheaper per ticket than buying them from the vending machines.

When we got back we were feeling a little tired, so Jimmy invited us back to his place to chill out for a while. We drank some coffee and played a pretty cool game with dice on the coffee table. I didn't think any sort of dice game could be entertaining, but this one was addictive. The object of the game was to make decisions and reach a certain score. I know what you're thinking, but seriously, it was good.

What would a trip to Japan be without sashimi? After some initial confusion about where to meet, we found my sister and she took us to a local sushi bar. The menu items were written all over the walls and the place was nice and cozy.

Well all I can say is that you haven't eaten sashimi until you've eaten it in Japan. The flavours of the meat are more complex and refreshing than anything I've tried overseas. The portions are cut much thicker than I expected and the wasabi is freshly ground. Chongmal masshissoyo! (very delicious!). On the table there we have some soft squid and huge slices of salmon, a popular favourite. The cups in the photo were bigger than normal, so just compare the pieces to the chopsticks.

The next day we went to Hep 5, a landmark shopping centre with a ferris wheel. Upon entering the building you're greeted by this rather confronting whale sculpture hanging from the ceiling.

This is the outdoor ferris wheel they have at Hep 5. It's base is on the seventh floor of the shopping centre and has great views of the city.

The wheel is always continuously in motion, unlike the wheels in Australia that stop to let passengers on and off. It turns slowly enough, but if you leave something in one of the carriages, you have to wait until it comes around again.

Here is the amazing insect-woman that accompanied me on my journey. In this photo we were walking in the streets between Hep 5 and the Umeda Sky Building.

And here's the Umeda Sky Building. We saw it from the ferris wheel and just kept walking along the streets towards it until it got bigger. At the top it has a 'floating garden observatory' where you can see panoramic views of the city. Those two ramps leading into the centre circle are escalators up to it.

Luckily for us it was a nice clear day. Heights have always freaked me out a little.

Osaka is a picturesque, low-lying metropolis with a lot of bridges. Unlike Busan, the mountains are far off in the distance. We stayed here for a good hour or two before moving on. In the cafeteria we ate ice-cream sandwiches.

After that we went to Osaka Castle, a big historical site in the middle of the city. The area is surrounded by a moat and used to protect a small citadel. Now it's a popular tourist attraction and has good examples of Japanese architecture.

Inside the castle grounds is a lot of good landscaping and the trees are well kept. I noticed around the streets that the trees are all neatly pruned in general.

There were a few restaurants and souvenir shops in the castle grounds, so we bought some more takoyaki. They're very tasty and Heather had a dream about them when she came back.

Here's the main building in Osaka castle. The palace was built in 1585 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi as a fortified residence, but has been knocked down several times in history. The most recent restoration was in 1997 and the results are quite stunning.

The building is now a multi-level museum with interactive displays about the area's history. This is the view from the top floor over the castle grounds. The golden fish tails on the roof are plated with 7 coats of gold leaf. They'd make a nice souvenir. There were more gold decorations on the hand rails, but they were shielded with acrylic.

After that we couldn't resist stopping off for some more sashimi. Here you can see eel on the left and o-toro (tuna belly) on the right. It's the kind of food you daydream about the day after you've eaten it.

Then we went out to dinner with my sister again. On the right is Emiko, a sociable Japanese English teacher who likes to play and talk about tennis. Apparently, her tennis coach is very good and Emiko feels somewhat inferior to his lofty abilities.

That night we ate at Izakaya, a popular type of Japanese drinking establishment. They served us a lot of fried foods with dipping sauce that were done very well. Normally a lot of deep fried food gets sickening pretty quickly, but the batter style was very light. In this picture you can see some deep fried eggplant kushiyaki on skewers.

Here we are on the final night in Japan. I really liked the sake here, it tasted a little floral or something. The waitress took this photo of us.

After going to a small bar and having some drinks, Heather and I went back to the hotel to pack up for Korea. The hotel was called Il Cuore and was in the middle of Namba, which was a great location. I'd recommend this place if you're planning on staying in Osaka for a few nights.

We missed our first flight back to Korea because we misjudged the subway timetable. Luckily the helpful airport workers booked us onto the next flight a couple of hours later, so we weren't late for work. What a tragedy that would have been.

As I was saying, both Korea and Japan have their fair share of good and bad points. Both times I've visited Japan, I've found it to be cleaner and more modern than Korea, but Korean people in general seem to be more straight forward. As the bartender in Zero put it, 'Japan is like a fantasy land, while Korea has clarity'. Both countries have fascinating cultures and much to be proud of.

Monday, May 05, 2008

Jeju Island

Jeju is the biggest island in Korea and located conveniently close to Busan. It was once the only unoccupied territory during the Mongol invasions and has a distinctly different climate and culture to the mainland. It has its own government and is famous for tangerines, diving women and little stone statues called dol-harubang.

But I never got around to visiting it until the other day. We booked tickets through Asiana Airlines (Korea's discount airline) and headed over for a weekend. Return trip tickets from Busan cost around $140 each. I left on the Friday night, walking out of my classroom in Busan at 7:30pm and was standing in Jeju airport at 9:00pm. Heather had arrived earlier on the Thursday, because she had more time off. She met me when I arrived at the airport, which is always a nice thing.

Heather wasn't happy with her original package accommodation, which didn't look anything like the internet advertisement. So she cancelled our booking with them and moved us to another place which was a little on the steep side, but much nicer. For short weekends away I don't mind staying in a $10 koshiwon, but I couldn't complain about our new lodgings.

I dropped off my bags in the room and we headed out to find some dinner. The first oddity we came across were these large sea cucumbers in a restaurant tank. They sell sea-cucumbers in Busan, but I've never seen them in a tank like this before. Curiously enough, when sea cucumbers feel threatened they are able to self-eviscerate and eject a portion of their internal organs into the water to confuse the predator while they escape. The organs will then regrow over a couple of weeks.
And in Japan, they are called 'sea-mice'.

I think they are more cucumber-like myself.

Jeju is famous for it's fresh fish, so we thought it appropriate to eat some Korean sashimi, or hue. This fairly regular plate of 'coral-bream' was more expensive because it was a wild fish. Wild fish are supposed to have more flavour than their farm-bred counterparts. I'm no expert, but I found the distinction to be negligible. It was still nice though.

The next day we noticed that the hotel looked quite splendid in the morning light. We stayed at the Oriental Hotel, which has its own casino and a couple of bars attached. It was off peak season, so not a lot of people were around. In the lounge bar later that day, we were the only two enjoying the live music.

Included in our room fee ($140 per night, twin share), was free buffet breakfast. I'm a huge fan of western style breakfast buffets. Hash browns, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, juice and salad were all beckoning. I went back for thirds.

There are three ways to get around Jeju as a tourist. The first is to rent a car, which we opted out of because we don't have licenses. The second is to hire a taxi driver for the day. That happens quite commonly in Jeju, but at a fee of $80 per day, it didn't seem particularly worthwhile. The third option is to take buses. They leave from the airport and don't go everywhere, but they stop at major terminals around the island. A bus ticket from one side of the island to the other is about $6.

We hopped on a bus after only waiting for a short while and traveled to Saguipo city, which is on the south side of the island. Soon after we got off the bus, this view greeted us. Because Jeju gets a lot more rain than the rest of Korea, the geography of the land is different.

This is a dol-harubang, which literally translates to 'stone grandfather'. Jeju people have made thousands of these throughout history, carving them from volcanic rock. They are supposed to protect villages from ethereal mischief, as well as bring fertility. The phallic resemblance is entirely deliberate, though it isn't a source of humour here.

They remind me of the Easter Island moai statues. That guy on the ground to the left was having a nap. I guess he felt safer with the harubang there.

Jeju City and Soguipo are the two cities on the island, but they have more of a country-town feel to them. It would be a nice place to retire.

The first attraction we visited was the Cheonjiyeon Waterfall, which is easily accessible by foot. The weather was perfect and the water was very clear. In the area were turtles and fish. This location is also the habitat of the Marbled Eel, which has a top selling price of $1000 per animal.

Heather makes the waterfall look nice.

If you stand too close to the edge, the water might fall on your head, as it did with this bumbling tourist guy.

Next we went to Il-Chul Land which is to the east of the island. It's famous for its gardens, statues and caves. We caught another bus from Saguipo and saw some good views of the island along the way.

The landscaped gardens were impressive and the area itself was very large. Along the walking trails were various stone carvings and cultural exhibits.

Some of the areas were divided up into small botanic gardens and there were greenhouses with cactus displays as well as a lot of palms and tropical plants that are unable to grow on the mainland.

This is what Heather was looking at in the previous photo. Carp are common in the temples and parks of Korea. These guys reminded me of those doctor fish that nibble your feet.

Another section had a small wildlife display. An old Korean myth says that there are rabbits living on the moon that make ddeok (rice cakes). Scientific inquiry has since busted that myth.

Ostriches are not the brightest of creatures, but at least this one was in a happy mood. We tried to feed it, but it seemed more interested in nibbling the bars. If you ever need to immobilise an ostrich, simply put a sock over its head and they will become instantly docile. I saw it on a television show where some guy had an ostrich farm.

This is the entrance to the Micheon Cave complex, in the centre of Il-Chul Land.

The caves are actually lava tubes that were formed during volcanic eruptions on the island centuries ago. Magma would flow through these passages and eventually reach the sea. Back when I was a boy scout, we used to explore caves like these for kilometres on end. My favourite cave was one called Gloop, which was next to a river and filled with water. We were often up to our waist in soft mud and I lost my shoe there.

Deeper in the caves, far away from the entrance are some ferns that have started growing on the walls and roof, in response to the sodium lamp lighting. There are even a few insects floating around. Life is a curious thing.

We ended the day late in the afternoon and had to head back to Jeju City. But Heather just wasn't ready to leave.

Jeju is also famous for its horse meat. We asked a taxi driver to take us somewhere that was popular and he dropped us off at this restaurant. It was getting late in the day and we had spent a lot of time walking. So by that time I was so hungry that I could have eaten a... erm, rabbit.

This is horse sashimi, raw horse meat with an egg yolk on top. It tastes fine, but surprisingly bland. There are no meaty flavours in the raw stuff, it tastes more like soft tofu or maybe jellyfish.

Then we had horse barbecue. The white thing in the centre is a lump of horse fat, which flavours the meat. When it's cooked, it tastes a little more like pork or beef. It was okay to eat, but I wouldn't go out of my way to do it again, because it's about double the price of beef but doesn't taste particularly unique. I prefer kangaroo meat myself.

Then we went for a walk near our hotel. It was a little cold but the colours were nice. After that we had some cognac in the lobby and watched tv in our room, which was a nice way to wind down.

We ended up leaving on the Sunday morning because the flights were all booked out for the afternoon. Jeju makes most of its money from tourism, so the whole island is very tourist friendly, with plenty of things to do. I think the best time to go would be in the summer, when the beaches are nice and warm.

It's always nice to escape the city you live in, even for a short while. We had a good weekend there and I'd recommend it to anyone who's thinking of visiting.

See you next time!