To go to Tokyo

Bullet train at Shin Osaka [Enlarge]

We thought the best use of our seven day rail pass would be to have two nights in three different places in Japan before travelling to our final destination on the seventh day. For our second and third two-nighter stops we chose the modern capital Tokyo and the ancient capital Kyoto.

Expecting the city to be busy, we pre-booked our accommodation. There aren't many bargains to be had in Tokyo, but we found a good place at USD 30 per person, per night (GBP 15.42). It was a long way out of the centre, but very close to a subway station.

After living in Seoul for a year, we thought we'd never again find it difficult to get around in any busy city. But we were wrong. Unlike Seoul's tightly integrated transport system, Tokyo's metropolitan transport system is privately owned by more than a dozen different operators. There's no common fare system—They can't even agree on a single map format! So you end up seeing endless completely different maps of the same city. It is almost impossible (at least when you've just arrived here) to work out the best way between two stations, or how much it's going to cost to get there. Even some residents just buy the minimum-price ticket and top it up at their destination, because it's easier than buying the right ticket beforehand.

We finally worked out how to get to the hotel. Our room was actually a rooftop apartment—clean, but a little shabby. The shy member of staff who checked us in offered us one end of a very long LAN cable to give us our advertised free internet access. The cable went out of our room under the door, across the roof, under another door and disappeared.

TV Asahi, Roppongi [Enlarge]

To say there's lots to do in Tokyo is an understatement. We only had a day and a bit here, so we couldn't do much. We randomly chose to go to the Roppongi area on the first evening and ended up on the 53rd floor of the Mori Tower, in a gallery which was holding a Turner Prize retrospective (a collection of Turner Prize winners and nominees from every year since the prize started in 1984). If you're not British you may not have heard of the Turner Prize. Basically it's a famous prize for modern art which always gets the media in a spin asking "Is it art?"

It was quite amusing to watch the Japanese trying to make sense of the works. As they looked at say Damien Hirst's Mother and Child Divided (a cow and a calf sliced in half longitudinally and suspended in formaldehyde), or even the 2001 winner The Lights Going On and Off by Martin Creed (an empty room with the lights going on and off from time to time), you could see them trying desperately to understand this mysterious European culture which could make works like that and what it all means. They didn't realise it's all a big joke by the British. (At least we assume it is...?)

Incidentally, walking between two halves of a pickled cow was quite an unusual experience.

We're finding it much harder to find food here than we did in Korea. It's not that there's a shortage of restaurants, just a shortage of reasonably priced ones. The language is a real problem too. We know Hiragana, one of the three Japanese alphabets, from some Japanese lessons we took several years ago, but that's not enough to accomplish anything. The most widely used alphabet is Kanji (Chinese-style characters), of which there are thousands. We have no hope of getting anywhere with them in one week. Our illiteracy means we have a choice between dragging the waiter outside to point at the plastic models in the window, or leaving the whole thing to chance—a potentially interesting, risky, disgusting or expensive move depending on the chef's sense of humour. Or going to McDonald's instead.

We are however big fans of Japanese convenience store food. Rice wrapped in fried bean curd is much yummier than it sounds and a steal at 198 yen (GBP 0.94 / USD 1.83) for three chunky parcels. But in our view Seoul still has the edge on Tokyo for delicious, cheap, accessible restaurants.

Tokyo Imperial Palace [Enlarge]

Tokyo is even more crowded than Seoul (we didn't think that was possible), but it is actually more pleasant because it's much more organised and ordered. We haven't once been bumped or barged into the gutter—in fact we haven't seen a single ajumma yet! Cars even stop at pedestrian crossings too! Speaking of which, one must see destination in Tokyo is the world's busiest pedestrian crossing. It's at Shibuya and is apparently correctly known as a pedestrian scramble by crossing designers. It's outside Shibuya station, where two JR lines, three Tokyo Metro lines and three private railway lines meet. It is surrounded by huge shopping malls and department stores. That makes for a lot of people. Every time the lights change, a few thousand people want to cross the road. There's a brief video clip at the bottom of the post.

We spent this afternoon riding a tandem around the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Get this: it's free! You just write your name on a piece of paper, and they lend you a bike! Imagine that happening back home.

After the cycling, we spent a while eating a convenience-store snack in the park in front of the Palace. All the time, sirens were wailing and helicopters circling overhead. We assumed this was normal for Tokyo, but this evening when we checked the news on the internet back at our hostel, we discovered there'd been a violent massacre in the Akihabara area of Tokyo—only a couple of kilometres from where we were. Sadly there's a darker side to this highly ordered society.

Tomorrow we'll be back on the train again, this time to Kyoto.

Day 561
Hiroshima to Tokyo

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

An infamous past

A-dome, Hiroshima [Enlarge]

Hiroshima has the 'ewww' factor as a tourist destination. Even now, 62 years after the fateful atomic blast, tourists are often reluctant to come here because they worry about the reception they will get. There is no need to worry. Hiroshima is not a depressing mausoleum. It's an attractive, modern city full of friendly, polite, welcoming people. In fact, it is probably the most welcoming place we have visited on our whole trip so far.

Our hotel was centrally located and all the tourist sights were a short walk away. To make the most of our seven-day rail pass, we can't stay for long in each place we visit. So we headed straight out for an early evening walk along the riverside path to the A-Bomb Dome, the preserved remains of Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. It was only 150 metres from the hypocentre (the point directly underneath the atomic explosion), and although all the buildings around it were flattened, its reinforced concrete walls and dome remained upright and semi-intact.

Over the years, the few buildings which were not completely destroyed in the blast were pulled down and new buildings were built in their places, but the Promotional Hall was left alone as a monument and reminder to the world. In 1996, it was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. At night the building is floodlit and bats swoop around the skeletal remains.

Bride in Shukkei Garden [Enlarge]

The centre of Hiroshima is full of monuments to peace and reminders of the past. The Shukkei-en, a seventeenth century garden modelled on West Lake at Hangzhou, China, was decimated by the bomb. Now the garden has been replanted and is beautiful again. The trees and plants have grown back and the tea house and other buildings have been rebuilt. As we arrived in the garden a young woman in an elaborate white kimono came down the path, followed by a photographer. She was having her wedding photos taken. She paused and smiled for Glenn's camera, then continued with what she was doing. After a minute watching her, we were approached by a man who introduced himself very politely and asked where we were from and if we would like a free guided tour of the garden. He was from a local society and happily talked to us about the garden, it's history, destruction and reconstruction. He turned out to be a retired automotive engineer from Fukuoka, who had once visited the Longbridge Rover plant in Birmingham. In his past life Glenn briefly worked on a Japanese automotive engineering project, so the two of them talked about that for a while ("Boring stuff"—Isla).

After lunch we visited the city's main "attraction": Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It is an excellent and thought provoking place. It makes no attempt to be political or to justify the actions of either side, it just explains things from a humanitarian perspective. On the ground floor there is a detailed explanation of why the bombing happened, the time-line leading up to it, and photos and models of the city before and after the explosion. Upstairs, items such as articles of clothing are displayed along with the stories of the people they belonged to. Every story is uniquely tragic. Many of them concern children who were in the area around the hypocentre, working to demolish rows of wooden buildings to create fire-breaks against conventional air raids which were feared by the city. Of course most of these people died instantly, but the less fortunate ones survived the initial blast. With horrific burns and injuries many of them managed to find their way home, or were found by their parents and taken home. They almost all died, days later, in unbelievable agony. We will never forget the pictures of people with their skin hanging off.

Before... [Enlarge]

...and after [Enlarge]

Over the following years and decades the bomb continued to take its toll in the form of radiation-induced cancers. Again, children were worst hit. Possibly the most famous is Sadako Sasaki. She was only two years old at the time of the bomb. Ten years later, in 1955, she was diagnosed with leukemia. A Japanese proverb states that a person who folds 1,000 paper cranes will be granted a wish. So Sadako began folding cranes, believing that if she could complete 1,000 she would be able to recover. She died in October 1955, having completed only 644 cranes. Her schoolmates decided to complete her unfinished task. This symbolic action captured the hearts and minds of the people of Hiroshima and eventually all over the world, and now thousands of paper cranes are hung from monuments throughout the city.

Hypocentre of the A-bomb explosion [Enlarge]

Sixty-two years later people are still dying from the effects of that moment in history.

One of the most telling displays in the museum is walls covered with letters to world leaders, written by successive Mayors of Hiroshima. Every time a country carries out a nuclear test, Hiroshima's Mayor issues a formal letter of protest to that country in the name of humanity. The letters began in 1968 with letters to France and China. The following year, the Mayor wrote to the USA. In the 1970s he also wrote to Russia and the UK. In the 1990s India and Pakistan joined the list. The most recent letter was dated October 2006. It was sent to Kim Jong-il.

Hiroshima is a beautiful, quiet, dignified, friendly place. It has rebuilt itself after the tragedy of 1945 to become a modern city, but its history is everywhere. At the hypocentre, an apartment block now stands, ivy and begonias trailing from the balconies, a small plaque by the side of the road marking the place. But there is no fanfare and no looking back in self-pity. It seems a little weird to say that we enjoyed our visit, but we really loved Hiroshima.

Bullet train to Hiroshima

Whale warning! [Enlarge]

The sailing on the jet hydrofoil from Busan to Hakata was boring. You are never aware of the boat rising up onto the wing things, and if the GPS hadn't told us we were travelling at 75kph (47mph) we would never have known. The only thing which made the journey more interesting was the threat of colliding with a whale at any moment. Seriously, the ferry company warned all passengers to remain in their seats with seat belts fastened in case we had to make an emergency stop to avoid a whale (see picture). Hitting a whale at the speed we were going wouldn't have been pleasant.

About half way into the three-hour journey we passed quite close to the Japanese island of Tsushima. At the same time the clouds dispersed and the sun came out, and Japan looked lush and green.

We docked in Hakata (a.k.a. Fukuoka) at 14:05, where the immigration guy took a long hard look at our passports. He seemed interested that we had visited the same city briefly exactly a year ago. We could see what he was wondering... illegal work? It was made worse by the fact that in the "address in Japan" section of the arrivals card we had nonchalantly written "travelling". He quizzed us in great detail on our itinerary in Japan, so we told him honestly that we didn't have a fixed plan, and then gave him a list of cities that we would probably be visiting. For the first time in our trip we were asked to produce return tickets to prove that we were planning to leave. We didn't have any. For a brief moment it didn't look good, but then he just smiled and said "Have a nice stay". We were in, and we had no problems passing through customs.

On board the bullet train [Enlarge]

Now we were in Japan but we still had no accommodation and no idea where we were going next. But we did have a Japan Rail Pass exchange voucher, which we had bought from a travel agent in Seoul (you can't buy it in Japan) for 275,600 Won (114.93 GBP / 224.65 USD). This little piece of paper, when swapped for an actual pass, would give us seven days of unlimited train travel on the JR network anywhere in Japan. Considering the price is only slightly more than a single one-way journey from Hakata to Tokyo, it's a screaming bargain. So, our rough plan was to get on the first available train to Hiroshima, but as we didn't know how full the trains were going to be, Plan B was to take another train somewhere else. Plan C (there's always a Plan C, right?) was to stay the night in Hakata and try again tomorrow.

Hakata felt a little familiar to us, since we spent two days here last year collecting our Korean work visas. We were planning to walk from the ferry terminal to the station, but it was hot and we had our luggage so we caught a bus from just outside the ferry terminal. Taxis in Japan are a definite no-no if you're watching your budget, and we're still thinking in Korean prices! At the station as we followed signs for the Japan Rail Pass desk, we remembered the eventful day in India last year when we went to New Delhi station. That time it took us four hours of scam dodging, crowd avoiding, queuing and mind-numbing form filling to buy a few tickets. We were braced for a marathon.

The desk was pretty easy to find, and the lady there spoke good English. We handed her the exchange forms, and our passports to show that we were in Japan as temporary visitors. Then she asked us when we'd like the seven day period to start, and we said that, if it was possible, we'd like to go to Hiroshima today. Without checking anything, she said that was no problem. How could she be sure? Had she misunderstood? We were just about to ask whether she thought it would be a good idea to make a seat reservation, or whether there would be spaces in the unreserved section, when two tickets popped out of the printer under the counter. She handed them to us, along with our shiny new passes (which look a lot like Christmas cards). We were in reserved seats on the bullet train to Hiroshima leaving in six minutes!

Nine minutes after asking if it would be possible to get on a train today, we were outside the city limits travelling at 250 km/h and accelerating.

Oh... My... God... Japan makes our country's arcane rail system look like India's.

Seventy silent, gliding minutes later we arrived no seconds late at Hiroshima station. We decided to give the Tourist Information desk at the station a go, to see if they could come up with some reasonably-priced accommodation. They could, and a woman with excellent English booked us a semi-double (semi-double? Sounds tiny) at the Comfort Hotel Hiroshima for 6,200 yen (GBP 29.94 / USD 58.52) per room per night including breakfast and free internet. A price like that was most definitely not in the script! We were expecting to have to choose between staying in a flea-pit or completely emptying our wallets.

After a tasty tonkatsu lunch in one of the many restaurants in the station we caught a tram to our hotel and checked in. The room is indeed tiny, but it is spotlessly clean, has a bathroom, window, fridge, a TV with at least one English channel, and free wireless internet. It's perfect. So far, so good. It's starting to sink in that we're back travelling. But what sort of reception are we going to get in the world's first nuked city?

Day 559
Busan to Hiroshima

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Starting out again

Seoul Station [Enlarge]

In our quest to minimise air travel on our round-the-world trip, we've found ferries to be one of the harder modes of transport to use. They always seem to be operated by ancient shipping lines out of pokey, smokey offices deep in warrenlike ports with very bad signage. They hardly ever have online booking, and if they do you can forget about it being available in English. When we tried to arrange our boat to Japan last week it turned out that the Korea to Japan ferries are no exception to the norm. We'd heard about the high speed JR Beetle ferry run by Japan Railways, and their website was available in English... but it says you can only book from within Japan. After a lot of internet searching, Isla stumbled upon Mirae Jet who run the Kobee high speed ferry. This appears to be the Korean Beetle. Naturally you can book from Korea, and the prices are cheaper, but unfortunately their site is only in Korean. And anyway, foreigners can't use their foreign credit cards to book even if they can understand the language. So we asked a Korean friend to book it for us on the phone, cost 95,000 Won per person one-way (GBP 47.48 / USD 92.82).

Incidentally, one thing we will not miss about Korea is the fact that as foreigners, we have been deprived of the chance to access basic financial services like credit cards and international ATM cards which would allow us to withdraw our legally earned, legally deposited Korean money when outside Korea. This means we're carrying a paranoia-inducing amount of cash with us to Japan.

Haeundae Beach, Busan [Enlarge]

With just two days remaining on our Korean visas we left Seoul for the last time (for now at least) on the high-speed KTX train to Busan. Located in the far south-eastern corner of the peninsula, Busan is Korea's second city, and its gateway to Japan. It is also proud of the fact that it was the only city on the mainland never to fall to the Commies during the Korean war. We decided to spend two nights there, enjoying the fresh seaside air away from the smog and yellow dust of Seoul. We found a great deal on the internet for a hotel next to Haeundae beach, with a huge bathtub and a sea view. Gradually we started to feel like ourselves again.

The atmosphere in Haeundae was a little strange, as it is in any seaside town in the off-season. In August there will be a gazillion holidaymakers from all over the country here (see this great picture and this one for an idea). But this was June, and Koreans don't vacation in June. The weather wasn't so great anyway, with torrential rain and thunderstorms a lot of the time, so we didn't do very much apart from relaxing. We spent the time drinking coffee in near-empty coffee shops, walking along the beach, and observing that there seem to be more love motels than people in Haeundae at this time of year.

Day 557
Seoul to Busan

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

And that, as they say, is that

Admiral Yi Sun-shin [Enlarge]

Waking up at 05:00 every day we sometimes thought we wouldn't make it to the end of the week, let alone the month, or the year. For the last three months, we've been trying to avoid counting down the time remaining to the end of our contracts, since as every school kid knows, counting down to the end of term just makes the time go slower.

And then suddenly it was all over! Now when we look back we can't believe how fast the last twelve months went.

We've learned a lot about Korea and about being Korean, we've also learned about our own culture by seeing it through the eyes of foreigners. We have a much better idea of how another country perceives Britain and the British—we have received both cutting insights and funny misconceptions from the people we've met. We've made friends with people from different corners of the world. We'll take so much away with us from Korea.

Review of our goals

• Experience living in a different culture...Check
• Save as much money as possible...GBP 26,000 / USD 52,000—Check!
• Glenn to overcome his fear of public speaking... Oh yes!

We'd say that is a result.

In all honesty, saving that much money has been one of the hardest things we've ever done. We literally didn't spend a penny all year on anything that wasn't essential. Around the half-way mark it became really painful but we were determined not to slip up, and we're proud to say we managed.

Now, our visas are expiring and it's time to go. Japan seems like as good a place as any to go next, so we've found someone to take over the apartment, sold all our stuff (for the second time in our lives!), packed our tiny bags and bought a ticket on the ferry. Tomorrow we're back on the road.