Japan
Promises to write more last week fell through due to laziness and time flying. Just got in from Japan tonight and too tired to sleep, which is gonna be great when I have to wake up early for work tomorrow.
Along with it being our weekend to go to Japan, it was also Joe's last weekend in Korea, so on Thursday night a bunch of us headed out to TGIFs for dinner after work. Their night carried on into the wee hours of the morning, I'm sure, but Andrew and I had to head out to Busan in order to catch our 8:30 ferry to Fukoka. The KTX train doesn't leave early enough in the mornings to arrive on time, so we had to head down the night before.
We considered grabbing a hotel for the night, but then realized we could just spend all night at the casino instead, which would be wayyyy more fun. So at around one o'clock in the morning we arrived in Busan to a torrential downpour and then headed over to the casino. On the train ride up I kept thinking I was going to play 19 and 23 until they hit, so I got some chips and started playing, the second number that came up was 23 and I won about $300. Two or three spins later and 19 hit. I was loving life. The night continued on like that and I was way up, but then I started to go down. I should have cashed out but figured we were there to spend the night and sitting around was no fun, so I cashed out what I had put in originally and figured that at the very least I would break even for the night. We continued playing right up until 7:30 in the morning and I walked out of the casino up $250, perfect for some spending money in Japan.
We headed over to the ferry terminal and got through customs with about 1 minute to spare before the jet-foil, super fast boat sped off. Immediately Andrew and I fell asleep. Now if you think we were tired from being up all night, I should give Andrew credit because he had been on a two week trip over in South America because he won a trip for a PokerStars tournament, so he was still recovering from his first trip.
At around one we arrived and both of us were looking a little rough around the edges from lack of sleep, so we found a somewhat cheap hotel, had a few hours sleep, and then got ready to go out exploring. One of the guidebooks recommended that Nagasu was the place to be for young salary earning men and women, and we figured that would be a great place to find some sushi and maybe meet a few other foreigners to hang out with. Turns out Nagasu was the red light district and Andrew and I agreed that we didn't want to eat dinner on "stripper street." Instead we headed to Canal City, which is a massive mall that the guidebook also hyped up. After exploring all the food options we sat down at a sushi train and had a few pieces of sushi, but it wasn't all that special so we decided to make that our appetizer and head somewhere else. We settled in at an oyster bar and ordered some wine and asked the server what he would recommend. He pointed to one on the menu and said he liked it because it was the biggest. We thought that sounded better than the creamy one he also suggested so we ordered two of them. They were like the size of a fist! It was a little daunting at first to eat it, but after Andrew ate his and said it was pretty good, I tried mine and actually thought it was the best oyster I've ever had. We also had an oyster pasta which was pretty good as well.
Along with it being our weekend to go to Japan, it was also Joe's last weekend in Korea, so on Thursday night a bunch of us headed out to TGIFs for dinner after work. Their night carried on into the wee hours of the morning, I'm sure, but Andrew and I had to head out to Busan in order to catch our 8:30 ferry to Fukoka. The KTX train doesn't leave early enough in the mornings to arrive on time, so we had to head down the night before.
We considered grabbing a hotel for the night, but then realized we could just spend all night at the casino instead, which would be wayyyy more fun. So at around one o'clock in the morning we arrived in Busan to a torrential downpour and then headed over to the casino. On the train ride up I kept thinking I was going to play 19 and 23 until they hit, so I got some chips and started playing, the second number that came up was 23 and I won about $300. Two or three spins later and 19 hit. I was loving life. The night continued on like that and I was way up, but then I started to go down. I should have cashed out but figured we were there to spend the night and sitting around was no fun, so I cashed out what I had put in originally and figured that at the very least I would break even for the night. We continued playing right up until 7:30 in the morning and I walked out of the casino up $250, perfect for some spending money in Japan.
We headed over to the ferry terminal and got through customs with about 1 minute to spare before the jet-foil, super fast boat sped off. Immediately Andrew and I fell asleep. Now if you think we were tired from being up all night, I should give Andrew credit because he had been on a two week trip over in South America because he won a trip for a PokerStars tournament, so he was still recovering from his first trip.
At around one we arrived and both of us were looking a little rough around the edges from lack of sleep, so we found a somewhat cheap hotel, had a few hours sleep, and then got ready to go out exploring. One of the guidebooks recommended that Nagasu was the place to be for young salary earning men and women, and we figured that would be a great place to find some sushi and maybe meet a few other foreigners to hang out with. Turns out Nagasu was the red light district and Andrew and I agreed that we didn't want to eat dinner on "stripper street." Instead we headed to Canal City, which is a massive mall that the guidebook also hyped up. After exploring all the food options we sat down at a sushi train and had a few pieces of sushi, but it wasn't all that special so we decided to make that our appetizer and head somewhere else. We settled in at an oyster bar and ordered some wine and asked the server what he would recommend. He pointed to one on the menu and said he liked it because it was the biggest. We thought that sounded better than the creamy one he also suggested so we ordered two of them. They were like the size of a fist! It was a little daunting at first to eat it, but after Andrew ate his and said it was pretty good, I tried mine and actually thought it was the best oyster I've ever had. We also had an oyster pasta which was pretty good as well.
Next we decided we needed to find somewhere to drink for the night and were still amazed that we hadn't found any foreigners. From neighborhood to neighborhood we went and nothing seemed promising, finally we ended up at a 80s pop music bar that had a few Japanese people in it and we decided we would stay and have a drink. Andrew had rye and ginger, I had wine, and our bill ended up being $3200 yen...which is like $40! Ridiculous.
More wandering around and still nothing. Finally we stopped in at an internet place and looked a few places up online. We got to one foreign place and it was okay but we thought we would check out a place called Dark Room because it was toted as being Fukoka's best foreign spot. Turns out it was pretty awesome and we ended up staying until six in the morning.
Slept through Saturday morning and felt a little better than death upon waking up. We headed over to Canal City to do some shopping and eat some food. We decided on Wendy's, because Korea doesn't have Wendy's, and I thought it would ease my hangover a little. It was pretty delicious. I originally had wanted to shop around, but the mall was crowded and everything was expensive, and nothing really grabbed my attention. Instead we ended up walking all along the rivers and ended up back down at the harbour which was a nice way to spend the afternoon.
It was into evening by that time and we headed back to the hotel to change to go out for a nice Japanese dinner and then maybe go to a concert we had heard about the night before. Upon getting to the hotel, both of us sprawled onto our teeny tiny beds for a short minute, and before we knew it we had been asleep for an hour! I showered and got ready and came out and Andrew was still sleeping. I figured he was probably exhausted and let him sleep a bit longer. Then he woke up and said he had to get ready, but fell asleep again about 30 seconds later. This went on all night and in the end we didn't go anywhere and I watched the Olympics on TV. It was a little disapointing for us because we had wanted to go out, but in the end I think he probably really needed the sleep, and the boat back this morning was so rocky that I was relieved I didn't have a hangover to contend with.
Anyhow we arrived back in Busan around four, headed to the beach area because there's a great Indian restaurant there and managed to make it to the train station with just minutes to spare for our train.
Overall it was a great weekend. Fukoka didn't have a ton of stuff for us to do, but we traveled well together and it was nice to get to see another country before my time here expires. Sadly/happily next time I go through customs will be on my way home to Canada!
1 comment:
haha, i Hope somewhere in all that exploring you got your Visa?!?!? :) Sounds like fun, I don't know how you stay up so late. B
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