A long weekend in South Korea!

Feb 8th - Feb 11th



Oh my goodness, I have just had the most fantastic weekend ever! Even when things went bad, everything still felt ok!
On the long weekend in February, myself and Todd decided to treat ourselves to a rather cheap flight over to South Korea for a few days. The plan was to head to Seoul on Friday night, spend Saturday and Sunday in and around the city, checking out the sights, and then head back to Japan on Monday afternoon. And that's what we did!

So after a bit of a shaky start (we made it to the last station of the subway line at midnight - missing our actual stop by 40 minutes!) we made it to our wonderful hotel (with a heated floor - divine!) and crashed into bed ready for our explorations the next day. We were a bit disappointed actually. Before the trip we had planned to visit the DMZ on the Saturday, taking a tour that would show us spots around the DMZ and also giving us the chance to get a Korean style lunch. However, it turned out that this weekend happened to be the Lunar New Year in Korea so tours weren't running at all. Although this was a shame as we were looking forward to doing the tour, we decided that (as it is neither far, nor expensive to fly to Korea) we would enjoy the freedom that not doing the tour gave us and would explore a lot more of Seoul this weekend before returning once again to do the DMZ tour in the future.

So Saturday morning saw us get a little bit of culture as we visited a couple of Korean Palaces. Gyeongbok and Changdeok. Both we very interesting to look around and I really enjoyed seeing all of the decoration on the outside of the buildings. The paintwork decoration was really beautiful, and I also found these little figures on the corners of the roofs which I am still not entirely sure why they are there, but they were definitely pleasing to look at. At Gyeongbok Palace, we also sort of witnessed the changing of the guard. I say almost, we were the other side of the gate they were guarding so I'm sure it looked a little more impressive out the front, but we did see the new guard duty go through the gate and then the old one came through the other side as they switched out. It was nice to see anyway and we took the opportunity to get out photos with the new guard before the cold started getting to them! And boy was it cold! Seoul had clearly had a lot of snow before we arrived and it had just stayed as the weather, I don't think, had not gone above 2 or 3 degrees for weeks. Brrrrr.
Just before the two palaces, we also stumbled upon a colourfully decorated temple. Not really sure what is was apart from a Buddhist temple(?) but it was nice to see a bit of culture before finding the palaces. I'm not really going to explain a lot about these temples/palaces as I'll do my usual thing of letting the pictures tell the story.

Beautiful colours!

Funny little statues on the corners

Ok. So after the palaces we made our way into the small winding roads of Bukchon Hanok Village. A small village that has the traditional Korean hanok style houses. It was nice to wander around the village looking at the old structures, but the best part was something we accidentally stumbled on. As we were walking down one of the streets, we had to stop as it looked like a mini photo shoot was going on. There was a girl further down the road dressed in traditional Korean dress. As we got closer (and snapped a photo with her) we found out that in the house she was outside, we could go in and actually try on these clothes! So obviously that's what we did. It was great fun (an added bonus was that we got a quick respite from the cold outside) and we were spoilt rotten in this house as the two girls took great care of us dressing us up in these (incredibly comfortable) traditional clothes and giving us a long photo shoot of us standing in different poses around this small Korean house. A really good experience, especially as it was one we weren't expecting.

Artistic shot from Todd

So after the morning of culture we decided to have a break (and get some lunch) so we headed towards one of the more famous markets in Seoul - Namdaemun Market. It was really nice walking up and down this market, checking out the mixture of goods, souvenir shops and food. We grabbed a bit of Korean cuisine in the form of 'meat on a stick' consisting of pieces of crab, squid and sausage all deep fried and covered in sweet chili sauce. Yummy! We also got a Korean pancake to share which consisted of cabbage and other vegetables fried together (not the healthiest of lunches I confess). We didn't spend long in the market as it had been a late night and we wanted to get some rest before our evening, so we headed back to the subway and back to our hotel to wash up before our amazing dinner plans!

Yum on a stick!

That's another quick thing I wanted to mention. Getting around Seoul is so easy to do. They have a wonderful subway system that is really easy to navigate. At the beginning of our trip we bought a couple of travel cards (like London's Oyster card) and popped a bit of money onto it. We put the equivalent of twenty pounds onto the card which lasted for our entire weekend of journeys and we were still left with money for next time!
Ok so our dinner plans on Saturday night. And what plans they turned out to be! Seoul Tower stands at the top of Namsan mountain at 236m tall and looks over all of Seoul. Instead of just doing the standard, get tickets to go up to the observatory to see the view of the city from a tower, we decided to do things a little differently and so booked a table at the top restaurant in the tower - N. Grill, a stylish French restaurant with a Michelin star chef. The best part? This restaurant was actually in the only part of the tower that revolved. That's right, I fulfilled a life-long dream and had dinner in a revolving restaurant! The restaurant did a full rotation in 1 hour and 40 minutes so we managed to look out over all of Seoul in our 2 1/2 hours from the top of this tower. We could look out easily as we had booked a table where we sat on a sofa looking out of the windows! So let me just point out that this was special from the start. I never dreamt that I would be able to do this as I was aware that this kind of experience is actually quite expensive. Luckily, because of my job in Japan, I was able to do this without feeling the tiniest bit of guilt at the money I was spending. It was wonderful. I'll briefly go over the menu (not very well as I was a bit out of my league and so am not entirely sure what everything was!), and instead of repeating myself each and every time, let me just say that every single course was delicious and I couldn't believe my luck every time a new plate landed in front of me.
So the menu was:
Amuse-bouche - something wrapped in leek?!
A type of ham with pickle
Grilled octopus
Pumpkin soup with ravioli
Lamb cutlets with spinach and salad
Apple tart with cream

Topped with our 'couples set' which came with a glass of bubbly and a chocolate cake to finish! Perfect. Add to that the bottle of wine we also ordered and it came to an extremely enjoyable/tasty/memorable experience, and with the company, probably the best experience I've ever had! If I don't stop now, I will continue to rave about this until the end of the earth so it's probably best that I stop. Even if we did nothing for the rest of the trip, I knew that it didn't matter as I couldn't see how anything could top the night/experience that I had just had!

Seoul Tower

Bit of bubbly

yum!!!

Best table in the house!

Ok so Saturday was productive, interesting and wonderful so I was positive that Sunday would hold just as many fun experiences. And I wasn't wrong! We started off our day heading towards Cheonggyecheon Stream that runs through the centre of Seoul. This stream has been made into a great place for people in Seoul to come down and meet and relax down by the water. There wasn't many people there when we got there however, I'm assuming because it was so cold no one in there right mind except tourists looking to get a quick snap of the place would dream of heading down to the stream. Anyway, it was a great start to the day - turns out the start of the stream was just down the road from Gyeongbok Palace so we had a great view up the road of a few statues with the palace in the background, behind that surrounded by mountains! Then we headed down for a quick walk down the stream, which was very pleasant and I could see how it would be beautiful and relaxing in the summer, but we didn't stay long and it was too cold and we had a bigger sight in mind.

 
Onwards to Lotte World then - 'an enormous shopping and entertainment complex that happens to hold one of the largest ice skating rinks in Korea, and the largest indoor theme park in the world'! Yes please! When we got there, we bought ourselves an adventure pass that allowed us on all the rides and in both sections of the park. From the start we decided that we would ignore the 'magic park' of the complex, as this was the outdoor bit and we wanted to stay warm and enjoy the delights the inside section had to offer. We went on a few rides, though the two most notable were the 'hot air ballon' where 4 people get pulled up off the ground in a fake air balloon and transported in a giant loop around the entire Lotte World complex allowing you to get a full birds-eye view of everything the place had to offer. It was really cutesy but really fun and was great to get to see and map out everything that we wanted to do there. Another ride which I was extremely impressed with was the roller coaster they had. It was called French Revolution and had many quick drops and loops that were incredibly fast and exciting! I couldn't believe how good it was as I was not expecting much from an indoor ride. However, I was buzzing once I got off the ride, and was very content as it was the last ride we had planned to do. We then tested our skills by navigating our way through a mirror maze. I went in thinking it would be easy, but once we spat ourselves back out by the entrance we realised that it was going to be more challenging than we first thought! We got to try our flexibility as well as we tried to shimmy our way through a laser room, but we both failed epically quite a few times and it didn't take us long to give up as we strolled through the room with the klaxons blaring!

Looking down on the whole of Lotte World from our balloon

 Then we headed to a quick lunch at TGIs before heading down for a bit of fun in the ice skating rink. I was suitably impressed with Todd's skill on the ice, and as I flailed around trying to look like I knew what I was doing, Todd was casually skating around with ease making it look like this was the most natural thing in the world! I eventually got back into it and we had a bit of fun testing each others' skills and our own as we weaved in and out of the less stable around us. Brilliant!
After that, it was time to leave Lotte World and to check out a few of the night-life sights we  had heard about. First up, Gangnam.

So we saw the music video 'Gangnam Style' a while back and figured that we had to at least go and see this place to know what all the fuss was about, and I think we can both say we were pleasantly surprised by how vibrant and fun Gangnam was! Obviously we got the typical tourist photo of us doing the dance in front of the stand the place had set up for annoying tourists just like ourselves, but we also took the time to walk up and down the main street and it was a feast for the eyes to be sure. It was a shame we had planned to go to another part of the city to get food, and if we had had more time I'm sure we could have spent hours checking out all Gangnam had to offer. Unfortunately though we had to move on fairly quickly, but I know if I go back to Seoul, I will be going back to Gangnam again.

So our final destination of the evening was in a district called Itaewon, and we had heard that it was apparently very western-friendly so we were keen to check it out. It was crazy walking out of the subway and onto the street as everywhere we looked we could see places from America and England. It was strange actually but this district was also the dirtiest looking place I have been to in Asia - I wonder what that says about the western world?! Anyway, after being tempted by quite a few eateries we decided that (after our big lunch earlier in the day) what we really needed was a good drink so we headed to The Bulldog pub for one! This place was great and I will definitely go back to it if I come back to Seoul! It played music from the 80s and 90s and the drinks were tasty. We stayed there for a little while but then decided to go and relax in the hotel as we had had another busy day. However, that wasn't quite the last stop as I was craving sugar (like always) and more specifically I was craving waffles. Thinking we were out of luck as it was gone 10 by the time we headed back to the hotel, I was over the moon to discover that the waffle cafe, just 2 minutes down the road from our hotel, was open until midnight! So we stopped in for a quick waffle (banana and cream with dark chocolate ice cream on the side for me!) before heading back to our hotel and pretty much crashing for the night.

Compared to the last two days, Monday was extremely quiet. Actually we hadn't quite planned it/thought about it properly, so we had intended to go to another market for the morning to pick up some lunch and souvenirs before heading back to airport in the afternoon. However, we soon realised our mistake that Monday was a public holiday and so the market didn't open! Considering our trip, I wasn't too disappointed as I could see we had been very lucky in everything that we had done before, but it still felt a little flat when we admitted defeat and tried to go to the COEX mall to get souvenirs instead. It turned out that this was also a let down as it didn't have the type of things we were looking for, so eventually we gave upt and headed to the airport. Here things definitely picked up as we were able to have a brilliant buffet lunch (waffles again for dessert) before grabbing some souvenirs before getting on the plane. After a short flight back we touched down in Japan (a little warmer than Korea) grabbed a subway before getting on the bus to take us back home.

It was an absolutely wonderful weekend and one of the best trips I've had since been in Japan. (And if you read my blog, you'll know I've had many awesome trips!). I hope I can head back to Seoul again, though maybe go when it's a little warmer, and hopefully next time I can check out the DMZ, as well a revisit a few of the things we did this time round. Altogether I am extremely happy and have many amazing memories - it made it very difficult to come back to school on Tuesday, but I can't complain!

Yamayaki Festival and Kobe Beef

Janurary 26th - Jauary 27th



So after feeling the slight sting of not being in New Zealand, and living in Japan once more, we decided we needed a distraction and a chance to get away. This came in the form of the Yamayaki Festival up in Nara. So on Saturday 26th Jan, Todd and I took the bus bound for Osaka. From there (after eating a delicious Mexican lunch - a tradition for us when visiting Osaka) we made out way over to Nara on the train. Nara is a very pretty little place which has a huge Buddha and a couple of temples, surrounded by a park filled with wild deer. I say wild, the deer are actually very tame as they are always being fed by tourist so they are always coming up to you hoping for a snack! I'm sure on a previous post I have written about Nara as a place, so I'll get straight onto the festival. So this snippit is shamelessly stolen from a very useful site on the internet, and if you ever want to find out more about anything in my posts, or of places in Japan in general, then this site is the place to go: http://www.japan-guide.com/
 So, 'the Wakakusa Yamayaki is an annual festival during which the grass on the hillside of Nara's Mount Wakakusayama is set on fire. (Yamayaki literal translation is Mountain Fire!) The mountain is located at the eastern end of Nara Park, and when it is set alight it can be seen throughout the city'
There are a few stories around the origin of the festival. Some claim that it was because of a fight over boundries between the two big temples of Nara, Todaiji and Kofukuji, both claiming the mountain to be theirs. Another, simpler argument is that it started in order to scare away the wild boars on the mountain and to keep the mountain from becoming overgrown. Whatever the reason, this festival happens every year and is definitely a sight to see.

So we made it to the park with plenty of time to spare, and after giving the deer some sembei (when in Nara....) we made our way to a perfect viewing spot where we had a clear, uninterrupted view of the mountain. We knew it was a good place as after a while, we turned around to see that, without realising it, we were surrounded by old men who had been busy setting up their cameras on tripods facing the mountain. We were also lucky enough to spot a few of our friends from Tokushima, who had also made it up to see the festival. We managed to get a nice chat in before the fireworks started. The fireworks were, as expected, fantastic and were made even better by a little boy next to us who whooped and awed after every firework went off - hilarious! Obviously when they set off many fireworks at the same time, they were brilliant to watch, but it was also fun to see the novalty fireworks that the festival set off, including the ones shaped in a deer head! Brilliant. After the firework display we saw the torches that light the mountain appear and in no time at all the entire mountain was on fire! What a sight to see! Although it didn't last long, it was really enjoyable to watch and I'm glad I went to see it. Afterwards we took the train and made our way out of Nara, across Osaka, and down to Kobe so that we could spend our entire Sunday there.

Arrived at Nara

Deer King!

Waiting for the event to kick off

Fireworks

Nara deer fireworks!

Just a mountain on fire...

So I confess, although I haven't been to Kobe before, I hadn't actually spent much time and thought into what we were going to do when we were there. Our main purpose and focus of the day was to get ourselves some Kobe beef. Infact, including the Mexican we had the day before, I think we can safely say that this weekend was more food focused than anything else, maybe Yamayaki was just an excuse to get us to the food places we wanted. So there are only two things I want to/need to mention about our Kobe day. 
1. Have you ever heard of Kobe beef?? Well we had, and we were extremely intrigued by it. This was our main reason for being in Kobe - we were going to get us some Kobe beef. We had heard it was the most succulent steak we would ever try - it practically melts in you mouth! And we were not disappointed. We got to lunch early (it wasn't even 11:30) but the restaurant was already pretty full, and by the time we left an hour later there was a sizable queue outside the door (a positive sign I think!) We headed up and got sat at a table with a grill infront of us. We both ordered the Kobe beef (of course!) and a few minutes later, a chef came out with our steaks and started cooking them there, right in front of us! Needless to say my mouth was watering whilst I watched this meat cook and I couldn't wait to try it. Luckily the meal also came with many sides so I got to focus my attention on that whilst I was waiting for the meat to cook. The lunch came with salad, rice, soup, pickles and the chef fried us some garlic chips, bean sprouts and cabbage. Everything was really delicious but it was just a distraction and paled in comparison when we finally got our cubes of meat. Oh. My. Word. I cannot say anything that will give the full impression of just how delicious this meat was. All I can say is get yourself to Kobe, and get yourself some Kobe beef!!

Eating the extras, waiting on the beef

ooooh... look at it!

Delicious!

2. Finally, to top off our weekend food tour, we headed into China town to look around for a while. We were actually very shocked to see that stalls and vendors next to each other would sell the exact same Chinese snacks and food. We were wondering how they all managed to stay in business but then decided we weren't worried about it too much. I decided to help along one stall and bought myself a delicious duck pancake filled with the standard duck, cucumber, spring onions and smothered with plum sauce. It was wonderful but the best part of it was that Todd had never tried one before so I got to introduce him to the wonderful world of duck pancakes! Delicious. It was with a heavy heart (and a very full belly) that we left Kobe that night and in the next year I'm sure we will make the trip to indulge once again in all the tastiness that Kobe has to offer - maybe this time we'll actually see some sights Kobe has to offer too!

Hiroshima take 2

So a really good part of being here for a second year means that I can go on and enjoy trips that I took last year. The first of the second trip (the first of many I hope) came in the form of the Sake Festival in Hiroshima. Now I won't go into too much detail about the festival as I wrote about it last year, but I'll just give the brief/key points.
This year (because I went last year) myself and Natasha, Dani and Todd decided to make a road trip out of this so that we could see and explore other places besides Hiroshima. Natasha was especially keen to do this as this would be her fourth year in Hiroshima so she felt that she had seen and done all there was to see and do multiple times. So our itinerary for this trip was to drive to Hiroshima on the Saturday (thanks to Dani for making it a short drive of 3 hours), then drive to Okayama on the Sunday, and finish the trip off by checking out Kurashiki on the way back to Tokushima on Monday.

yum!

So Saturday was great! We got to the hostel in great time and managed to snag a parking space next to the building. We then changed into our custom drawn sake fest tops before heading out for some lunch which came in the form of Hiroshimayaki - Hiroshima's version of okonomiyaki. Delicious! Then it was off to the train station and on to the sake festival.
Ok so a quick review of sake fest for you. You turn up and pay 1800yen and receive a sake cup in return. Then you get let into the arena which is surrounded by stalls pouring out different types of sake from all over Japan.

Ready. Go!

The best part of sake fest is the jovial and friendly atmosphere. With the help of a little (or a lot of) dutch courage, the language barriers break down and you find yourself 'talking'

custom tees for the occasion!

to anyone and everyone sharing jokes, photo shoots and sake recommendations! This year, like last year, we wore white shirts which we encouraged people to write on. Their main purpose was to record the numbers of the sake we tried (and the next day helped us to see how much we consumed the day before!), but above all they were great conversation starters and ice-breakers.What is so great about this trip is that it is really popular amongst the JET community, and we always get a great number come up from Tokushima, so even if you wander away from your group, you're never far away from a friend! Anyway, needless to say many people had one too many but it was a really fantastic day and I would highly recommend this festival to anyone visiting Japan around this time.

never far from a group of friends!

getting new friends to add to the tshirts!

making new friends - despite the language barrier!

having fun with the warriors!

Ok so feeling slightly worse for wear on Sunday, our group left all our other lovely JET friends to explore Hiroshima and headed off to Okayama. We got the hotel, dropped off our bags and headed straight for Okayama castle. The castle is famous for its black exterior - a rarity with Japanese castles. And it certainly made for an impressive sight. There were a couple of men dressed up as warriors outside so that was fun getting our pictures taken with them, and obviously they enjoyed milking it with the foreigners! Then we went in and looked around the castle (not worth the money in my opinion!) and by that time is was time to head quickly to the station for the main planned event of the day - a tour around the Kirin Beer Factory.

yummy frozen headed beer!

Actually we left it a little late and (with the terrible timings of the trains) realised that we weren't going to make our 3pm tour. Dani bravely phoned to them them know, and instead of saying 'that's too bad, maybe next time.' we were told that if we caught the next train, a car would pick us up from the station and we could make the 3:30 tour. So we did, and it was brilliant! Unfortunately the tour was only in Japanese, but as the tour guide knew we were coming, she made the effort to translate her commentary into English! So cute! This is why I love Japan. So the tour, although short, was very interesting and finished with 20 minutes of taste testing! Yum! We were all given our first beer which had frozen head on top, delicious! We also got to try their newest beer - a beer without barley in it! Actually it wasn't great and I was glad they only gave us a small sample. Along with our beer we were also given a little bag of crackers and some beer chocolate! It doesn't sound great but the mixture of dark chocolate with a beer jelly filling was delicious! Afterwards we all made sure to buy a box of the chocolates as souvenirs. One of the best parts of the trip? It was free! We couldn't believe it. It was such a nice surprise and we all fest very cheerful and content when we left (that had nothing to do with the beer!).

private pick-up!

progression of the cans

All our goodies!

Then it was back to the hotel to check in and chill out for a bit as we had been on our feet all day. For dinner we headed to an izakaya and then stopped for a drink at an American style bar/diner (I had a banana milkshake - so hard-core!). Then we headed back to the hotel and to sleeeeeep.
Ok so our last day started with a rather nice all-you-can eat breakfast. Then we drive back to the castle from the day before but this time we went into the castle's garden, Korakuen, to explore for a little while (definitely worth the money). Usually with gardens I get a bit bored after 20 minutes or so. It gets to the point where I think 'ok, this is a very pretty bridge, but it's more or less the same as the bridge I saw earlier.' However, with this garden, just when I started to think that I'd seen it all, I would turn the corner and find something new and even more beautiful than the last thing to look at. The photos don't really do it justice but this was by far the most spectacular and beautiful garden I have even seen!

After about an hour we came to the end, got back into the car and hit the road headed to the last stop of our trip - the town of Kurashiki.

Kurashiki had such a pretty area in it - a canal going through the middle of a picturesque town scape. A big reason we wanted to go to Kurashiki was because of the daily boat rides up and down the canal. Unfortunately, by the time we went to book a spot, there was only one space left. We all agreed to let Natasha take the spot as she was the one most looking forward to it. We had great fun strolling up and down the canal taking photos of Natasha as she sat in the boat with her little hat on her head! The rest of the trip was spent meandering around and in and out of the little side streets, dropping into quirky little shops that caught our eye. I didn't buy anything but I did have a wonderful time taking in the sites of this quaint place.

nice hat Tasha!

Then it was back to the car and homeward bound to Tokushima. What a fantastic weekend with perfect weather throughout. Thanks goes to Dani who drove the entire weekend (I definitely wouldn't have been able to drive on Sunday morning!) - she delivered us quickly and safely to all our destinations and enabled our trip to go that much more smoothly.
Perfect!