A very lazy post to cover the last two weeks

I haven't took you about the rest of Japan. Oops!

A very brief overview of Kyoto:
Well lots of temples... Like a lot! But each was amazing and beautiful and it snowed at several and it was just magical looking. I could tell you about each individual temple but it would take a while and to be honest it would probably be boring because it is way better to see them! I will say that there is something magic about snow floating down, bright green moss growing and red leaves on the trees. Temples are also surrounded my beautiful gardens. They are beautiful. There is pictures on face book.
We also went to an onzen, which is a public bath were you are with all women (or men depending on your gender obviously) and then soak in tubs of hot water. It was an experience. Not used to being around naked Asian women... Or having an spot where they send electricity through the water. Not sure what it is good for but totally weird feeling!

Now Osaka:
We went to a cool museum... It was in an old castle and all about the life of the man who united Japan as a country. Very interesting but all of the names started to make my head spin. Lots of people are involved in history. Who knew!

Then Hiroshima:
Heartbreaking. I left the museum after several hours totally nauseous. I am glad to have done it but I don't ever need to go back. Totally reinforced my feeling of anti nuke.

Then we came back to Michael's house to sleep and chill after a week of going and going and going. Then on to Seoul to get an India visa for Tara.

Seoul was really fun. We stayed in my favorite hostel I have been in yet. Meet wonderful people who did things with us. Went ice skating with a Peter who is from Slovakia (he taught me how to skate backwards. Also he looked a bit like he was born with skates on his feet but I guess you would expect that seeing where he is from), went to Gangnam with our new friend Raymond from Singapore, went out with the hostel owner and where we meet Raymond, Peter, Maggie, and Rahan, and overall just had fun. It was also freezing the whole time we were there.

Now we have left Tara's passport to get an India visa and are back at Michael's for Christmas. Thankful to have Tara with me for adventures and a house to come back to to cook and celebrate in. It will be very weird to be just the two of us for Christmas but Skype makes the distance between us and our families much smaller!

Tara and I got a teeny tiny Christmas tree and decorated it with earrings and put our small stack of presents under it. We hung an ankle sock of our stocking and are having marinated tofu, mash potatoes and eggnog for Christmas. Oh and we bought coffee to make on Christmas morning! It sound kinda sad but I am very happy with our Christmas spirit. I hope all of your holidays are bright and full of love. Hug those close to you and remember what a beautiful place the world is! Happy Christmas everyone.

Tokyo! Day one and two.

12/6

And off we go! I am writing this on my I pad while riding a bullet train across Japan. That's a really cool thing to be able to say. Now going back to where I last wrote.

Saturday Michael, Tara and I drove out of Ulsan to I don't remember the name (it's a Korean name and Korean names are ver hard to remember give me a break! I remember that I am in Ulsan, I live in dong-gu, how to direct a cab driver in Korean, that down town is by the lotte hotel and skyrex, and that buses 123, 401, 104, 127 will all take me home. But not the name of the town we went too). It took a while because of traffic and only getting to go 80 km/h but we drove all the way up the coast heading north.

We stayed at the most random hotel I have ever been in. The room is 30C and can't be turned down, a Korean woman sang 80s songs in very good English while a projected laser thing (like they use at dances/raves) ran, you sat on couches under beach umbrellas, a ham and cheese plate is the most well displayed spam I have ever seen, and breakfast potatoes are actually the French fries that they serve at public schools. There was also life size figures of an astronaut and pirate standing out side the restaurant.

On Sunday we went to a Korean national park. Emphasis on national. Which I won't be writing about. Lets just say it was pg 13 and a rather awkward/interesting but all around hysterical day. It was built because of a legend of a woman drown in front of her lover and all the fish went away. And you know what every drown woman needs? That's right a park full of man genitalia.

Now moving on from that and skipping a few days to Wednesday. We got up went and got cash and some granola bars from home plus and rode a bus to the train station. From there we took the train to Busan (one city over. About an hour by car but only twenty min on a train that goes 300+ km/h. Then rode the subway over one stop and found the ferry terminal. Where we spent all day. There is stuff to do in Busan and we wanted to do it but its hard with a back pack and it being cold. Note for the future, there is no reason at all to be at the ferry station before 5:30 pm if the ferry leaves at 8.

Finally we did get on the ferry though. It reminded me of the ferry I took while in Greece in the band trip but not quite as high class. We, of course, got the cheapest tickets we could and were in a room that had floor mats for 12 people. Luckily there was only 7 of us in the room. I really like ferries. So now after a night of defiantly not the best sleep ever (freaking Korean lady waking up at 5:30! There is no reason to get up at 5:30 on a ferry that doesn't get in until 8. And there is DEFIANTLY no reason to brightly start talking to the room full of sleeping people. No idea what she said but I was not happy to hear it.) (but we did meet a very nice man, who is a tour guide of korea, and his very sweet little girl. Then this morning while we were lining up to get off the ferry she and her totally gorgeous mother came up and gave us two packages of cookies we got a picture with the little girl. It was very sweet and totally made up for the 5:30 wake up.) we are in Japan.

I was expecting Japan to be a little bit more strict (just because they are kind of known for that) but I feel like we got stopped kind of a lot. There was an official guy who read over our immigration forms to make sure we had them filled in right, then the man that stamped out passports didn't like that we have no definite address in Tokyo, then the baggage searching people looked through my bag (was totally confused by the yoga may which is in my back pack), then we walked out of customs and immediately got stopped by a police officer who was there to check our pass ports again. The police guy gave us directions though so that was nice.

So now we are in Japan, with zero yen (haven't found a global ATM yet), and on a bullet train bound for Tokyo. I am over the moon. In the few hours we have been here there has been an even greater lack of English and we stand out a whole lot more. But this train is awesome and people have over all been nice. Not overly helpful but nice. Now we get to cram as much into the next week as we can then back on the ferry we go.

We will get to Tokyo in a couple more hours then first stop ATM, second stop food, third stop grocery store to load up on granola bars, fourth stop find a hostel. I just really hope that Japanese food is better that Korean food. I don't know if I can live on rice and granola bars.

12/7

We have done A TON today. It was the "lets see all of Tokyo in a day" day... And it was so much fun.

To start we are staying in a hostel in Asakusa. It is functional. Nothing fancy but it has beds and a safe place to drop our stuff and an almost comfortable bed. (To be honest, last night I could have slept on a rock so I am not totally sire about the bed.) We were totally lost foreigners last night, having to ask for help almost every step of the train and subway. This weird thing of I don't speak or read Japanese and they seem to like it here. But we did find the hostel where we finally got to drop our back packs and find some real food.

We ended up at an Indian restaurant because that was for sure vegetarian and warm. It was amazing. Everything was hot and filling. And wandered around getting a bit lost in the very cool streets that we found.

Now I am too lazy to go get the guide map so some of the fancy names but here is what I can come up with off the top of my head. We started by going to the shopping ont he street that is in Asakusa and walked all the way down to the temple that is at the end of it. The temple is the oldest one in Tokyo and was very beautiful. There was a prayer service going on when we where there with monks chanting and one beating a drum then the head man doing the incense. It was very cool and something I didn't know I would get to experience. Then we wandered around the garden and the shrines that where around the temple.

Next we wandered our way to Tokyo Tower (which is very close to the temple. We couldn't have wandered there is it wasn't because Tokyo, funnily enough, it Huge.) Tokyo tower looks a little bit like the Eiffel Tower (no quite right but I swear the key chains are made from the same mold). It has two observatories one at 150m and one at 250m. From the tower you could see a 360 view of Tokyo. Man it is a beautiful place. With a view out to the sea one way and to mount Fiji (not really because it is always kind of cloudy but apparently on a very, very clear day you can see it). Then buildings as far as you can see. It stretches on and on and on. It is dotted with trees and parks and there is a mix of old and brand new that is spectacular. It is so mind twisting to be walk by a sky scraper one minuet and through a temple build ages ago the next.

After lunch (ummmm we chose a veggie Demi plate and it was rice with like gravy on top. Tasty and served in a nifty little cast iron pan.) at Tokyo tower we took the JR rail to Shibuya which is the shopping area (according to our guide map!) and boy was it busy! Lots of stores and lots of people! And there we spent several hours wandering random streets window shopping and people watching. I could blow a lot of money here but seeing as I don't have money to blow or any space at all window shopping it is. There was quite an amazing (and totally ridiculously expensive) hat store.

It was dusk when we went back to the JR rail and took it to Shinjuku, which I think is the business district, to see the sky scrapers and wander around the businessy side of things. Sky scrapers have a strange beauty about then. True the fill up the sky line and can clutter the view but they are still amazing and can be beautiful. So we enjoyed that and did even more wandering before heading back to Asakusa and the hostel. We stopped for dinner in the train station and had seaweed onigri (rice balls filled with what tasted like seaweed salad.) then while searching for a man who was selling oranges yesterday we found a grocery store and got oranges and bananas and what we hoped was peanut butter (it wasn't. It is like peanut flavored carmel sauce. Which is fine but more sugar and I just wanted protein. Oh well it was something. But I am a little sad because I love peanut butter!)

Now I am sitting on the floor in the Internet room of the hostel chatting with Tara and a random Italian guy (dude this guy is awesome. he grew up in Luxembourg took a gap year in Africa, is going to college in wales, is here on a year off to learn more Japanese, and dreams of opening a tiny bed and breakfast in Tanzania. Super fun to chat with.) who is here on year off. Apparently there was a earthquake in Japan today that neither Tara or I felt. Which is really funny because apparently it was a rather bad one. But on a more important note, the pope got twitter!!! Say what?!? Now we are listening to a Brazilian song because the other two guys in here are speaking Brazilian. I think I like hostels. Tomorrow we are going to the imperial palace and then heading to Kyoto. I think this is going smashingly well!

Yet another week

Oops I have let another week fly by without writing about it. Im getting good at this being busy thing.

Last Friday we hosted a thanksgiving dinner for Michael's friends and it was quite enjoyable. There was 13 people so we made up chairs and ate on plastic tables but it was more about the people around the table. Tara and I cooked for a party of 13 of our family members and apparently people do not eat like our family. W have mashed potatoes coming out our ears! And had to freeze some of the turkey.

Saturday we had a thanksgiving dinner at one of his friends houses so I got to meet even more people. And we watched the football game. (Funny story. We are in Korea so the football game was recorded via the Internet. Being the exciting game that it was it went into overtime. And Texas was lining up to make the potentially winning field goal... And the recording quit.  Bahahaha 3 hours, 45 minuets, and 30 seconds of football. Most people sitting there for the entire thing! And it quit. All they needed was another 45 seconds. Poor people who are actually into football.) Then Tara, Michael, and I went to see some of the night life in downtown Ulsan. And we had some fun.

The only productive things from Sunday was that Tara and I went for a run and cleaned our room. We rock.

Monday was Tara's birthday! So we went to yoga class in the morning then lunch at a random coffee shop, then some shopping, then some chilling, then some grocery shopping, then dinner and pie with candles. All in all a rather successful day.

Tuesday we bummed around then went to Ilsan beach and did a hike that is from there. Super pretty. Really cool rocks that are apparently hiding a queen who turned into a dragon and is sleeping there to protect Korea from Japan.

Wednesday we did nothing. Literally nothing. It was wonderful. Who doesn't love hot chocolate with baileys and Harry Potter movies. It was also cloudy out.

Now today. We were very productive. Today we found the Ulsan culture museum. Oh my gosh Ulsan has lots of culture! Who knew. (Well old culture then they built themselves as the industrial hub of South Korea and decided to be a little anti art.) It was a very cool museum that started with stone pots and made its way all the way through to explaining oil refineries. (I use explaining loosely because the English translations were, well, short.) I never knew I could be so interested in industry but they did a very good job. There were videos (in Korean but I got the gist) of how big oil rigs are made and how cars are made. There was a wall that showed and describe what raw oil can be processed into and what that is then used in. I had no idea it was in so much stuff. Petroleum is in everything. We also met the nicest tour guide who walked us through and talked us through everything. She spoke almost no English and we speak basically no Korean so it was lots of gesturing and one word descriptions but she was wonderful. And then she started teaching us korean. Writing everything down and taught us their vowel sounds and then started with words. I was a bit confused through most of it but it was very nice to have someone talking us though somethings. Then dinner and a bus ride home (we are getting good at this bus thing. Though to be honest I trust Tara most of the time with all things involving direction. I seem to be missing an internal compass. Seriously half the time I will be walking in entirely the wrong direction. Woo getting lost like a pro.)

That's all for now! We are working on our plans for branching out from Korea. Hoping to go to Japan next week. Planning to spend a week there. So excited!

I tried to post this on Thursday but it wouldn't let me. So here it is and I will do the weekend later.