Vacation day 2

Day two so far

So I figured out where I was going to sleep last night, a capsule hotel. Everything there was great except for bed. They had a fantastic rooftop sento (a type of onsen or hottub) and free toothbrushes and razors. I think there was even free porn, but I was to stupid to realize that video in Japanese is code for porn.

The bed however sucked. It was to small, to hard, and most importantly there was no ac in my room meaning it was hot as balls the entire night. I don't think I've slept so badly sense I was in a hammock camping illegally in the middle of Tokyo getting eaten alive by bugs.

Thankfully i didn't have to sleep that long I woke up at 7 to get to the international terminal on time. Thankfully I stayed close to hakata but even so I had a hell of a time finding the bus stop (there are like 10 stops all spread out) and as a result cut it very close (10 min to spare) making it on the boat. 

The boat was great, it was a hydrofoil so there wasn't any turbulence and I was able to catch up on the sleep I didn't get in the capsule hotel.

Making into busan was uneventful except I think it's going to become tradition to be had by taxi scams in this damn country. I suffered an off by one bug when paying the cabbe and instead of giving him 3000 won for a 5 min trip I gave him 30000. About 30$ Damnit.

After that I wandered around the city a bit before my train ride to Seoul. Fairly uneventful, the cities port is beautiful if not a bit run down in places. Thankfully no more scams where to be had.

For lunch I played it safe and ate at mall food. Holy fuck I forgot how spicy food can be. This will take some getting used to. I'll figure it out after my mouth stops smoking. 

As I write this last part I'm waiting for a train to seoul. I'm meeting up and staying with Michael tonight and we'll see where things go from there. I'm excited to see another face from Seattle.  

Well I got into Seoul without a hitch, it was after that the hitches started. I needed to get into contact with Michael, but my phone was at 10% battery life, so there was a time limit. On top of that I couldn't find wifi in the station so I had to wander around for like 30min before finding anything I could use.

I finally got through, and it turns out Michael was halfway across the city. So over I went. When I got there I realized we hadn't set a meeting time or place and worse yet, there wasn't any Internet so I couldn't contact him or find his number. Queue wandering to each exit for the next half-hour before finally finding free Internet and being able to make contact. I met Michael with 2% battery life on my phone, talk about cutting it close.

The rest of the night was uneventful. We had dinner and caught up. Tomorrow I guess I'll go hiking in the afternoon, and drinking in the evening.

Here are my random thoughts of the day:

If you thought english in japan was bad, come to Korea. I've seen more engrish errors here in 2 hours than in the last 2 months I spent in japan.

I've also realized that I overpacked, badly. Who needs two coats, gloves and a hat in the middle of summer, my bag is already pushing 20kg. Anyway I'm working on a plan to get this stuff out of my pack, but in the mean time it's a bitch to carry around.

Korea, at least the parts I woke up to see is a really beautiful country once you get out if the cities. The same can be said about the islands around fukuoka. When I go back I want to visit them. I might dedicate a day here just to hiking as well.

I forgot just how much Seoul loves it's high-rise apartments. In japan due to earthquakes it costs a lot of money to build to far up. So the suburbs are generally only 10-12 stories high. Here it looks like 20 stories is the minimum.