Blog of the Morning Calm: Japan

You may have noticed a silence coming from the blog in the last couple of weeks. It wasn’t because we had been detained in a North Korean prison camp, but actually because it was winter vacation time and we were in Japan. And so instead of blogging inane details of our existence in our freezing schools while bored brainless, we were actually living it large(r) in the Far East.

So we will quickly sum up Japan in one word, like we did with China (Rammo). Japan = awefull. That’s right – new word coinage time: awefull.

Awefull (adj) – David and Katie had an awefull time in Japan. Japan was so brilliant and filled them with so much awe that the usual adjectives, such as ‘awesome’ and ‘wonderful’ are not sufficient. Antonyms: Awful

It all started with a ferry ride. Now, when it comes to travel, I like to be on time. In fact, I like to be early. I would much rather sit in an airport for an hour waiting for the plane to leave than at home twiddling my thumbs and then dashing to make it just on time. So I was packed and ready to go by 4pm on the day of the ferry. Dave came over and we did the final packing together and we were all set to leave by 5:30pm. The port was 45 minutes away and we had been told we had to check in at 6:30pm for boarding at 7pm, but Dave insisted we didn’t need to arrive until 7:30pm because the ferry wasn’t leaving until 10:30pm and so what was the rush? I was very annoyed by this because if there is one thing we have learned this year it’s that you can’t assume anything in Dynamic Korea! So after much bickering and sulking I managed to persuade him to leave in time to arrive at 7pm. 10 minutes before we got to the ferry port Dave got a phone call from the check-in people wondering where we were and why we were late. Ha! I was right! We rushed through check-in, only to sit and wait for boarding to start at 7:40pm, and then we were stuck on the ferry for a whole 3 hours before it even departed! By the time it pulled out of the dock, all of the shops and restaurants had closed, and Dave and I had polished off the 2 bottles of soju and 2 beers we had brought for the journey. We promptly fell asleep within minutes of leaving Busan and had the first of many disrupted nights’ sleep.

We arrived the next morning in Fukuoka, a little worn out and tired but extremely excited! We dumped our bags in a locker as we were only staying in the city for 15 hours, and then started exploring the area.

We found the first of many Japanese temples and saw a five storey pagoda!

Moss Trees

We continued walking and came across a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony. Much like the Koreans and Chinese, the Japanese have a fancier, bigger Western style wedding and then a small, close family, traditional ceremony.

We stumbled across what looked like the pissing boy statue that’s famous in Belgium.

We then went to Robosquare – a free exhibition in a department store where we saw a robot dog performance and various other cute and interesting creations.