travel in japan: part 1

I flew out of Hong Kong, into Korea. In Korea, I got to Seoul really late at night so I crashed at my freind Sung Won's house. He had to work early, and I had to take the KTX to Busan so I left Seoul around 6 in the morning. I got to Busan, sat around in the sun, rode the Busan subway just for fun, and then took the night-boat to Fukouka. The boat was fun, a karaoke room, a video room, and a public bath. The room itself, was a small room with no beds, 12 matresses, and 12 people just sleeping elbow to elbow. Cheap ticket. And now for a breif review of the first part of my travel in Japan, with photos.
This is the shoreline in Hakata. I saw this early in the morning, as I arrived. As I looked out, I felt strongly "I'm back" and I thought that was funny since I've never really been to Hakata (have been to Fukouka last year though).

I came to the total country-side, and met Evan and hung out at some local bars and met crazy bartenders. Evan has a great blog entry all about the fun moments! Roughly summerized as: beer, food, big cave, curry.

I met Tanya, and we headed out on the circle trip around Kyushu. In this picture we stop at a VERY country-side station "soutaro" and saw that there wasnt even a platform, just gravel and a small box chair for the station. Wild. On to more Trip pictures...
Miyazaki had these great tree lined roads, with tiny Japanese style cars.
Sakurajima (in Kagoshima) was an active volcano sitting on an island. It was kind of scary to think that the mountain's hobby was upchucking lava bits.
This is the river (moat?) infront of the castle we went to at Kumamoto. We didn't have the time/money to go in, but it was nice to look from the outside.
I couldn't help but include some of the awesome sakura cherry blossoms at the castle. They were so soft and pretty, blowing down in a cascade of pedals.
Not much blog time right now, so to summerize... we went in a loop. From up near Evan down to Miyazaki, kagoshima, kumamoto and then back to Fukouka. Tanya was a great trvel buddy because she never killed me for all my silly conversations and stuff. It was a lot of fun to see parts of Japan I've never seen. I'm now back hanging out at Evan's house, part 2 of my trip should be coming soon! Woo!

12th vlog - swinging

This is the most personal, and abstract, video log I've created yet. It is me, in a swing, looking at my toes, in Hong Kong. The weather was great and I couldn't resist the ride. You can see an occasional, and shaky, view of the horizon as my swing sways back and forth...

11th vlog - rewind hong kong

When Kayo was here, we rode around town in an old tram. I took this video out of the back of the tram window. The green trams slide along train tracks, through the middle of crowded streets and under pedestrian bridges. (This event happened before the event I blogged about a few minutes ago.)

singing in the streets

I'm always in for an odd surprise when I hang out with Kayo's high school friend Takeya. He came to Hong Kong with a senior from his school, and his friend Miwa. Yesterday, me, him and Nagayama (his senior) went to wander around Temple Street district. Takeya was distracted several times looking for flesh magazines for his "friend" (his suspicious choice of words!) but eventually we got to Temple Street. It used to be famous for Triad gangsters and the area still holds some of that edge, trash blowing along dirty streets. Stalls selling nock-off items, tourist knickknacks, stone buddha or mao sculptures, and some sort of anti-STD cream with horrific pictures of before the "magic product" was used. Nagayama speaks fluent mainland Chinese, and found us a dirty table on the street, where we could consume large amounts of local beer from large bottles. As we drank, he pulled out his "travel guitar" and began to play. Nagayama can't see very well at all, but he can communicate in many languages. He started with some loud world war two patriotic songs, then went to an Israeli song he knew that has an awesome chorus, a few instrumentals, and then to a Japanese song that Takeya sang with him. He then went onto a Japanese song about lower male body parts, and finally a few Chinese revolutionary songs. By the time he got to the Chinese revolution song he was screeching loud, screaming as he plucked away at his shabby guitar. Some old taxi drivers next to us enjoyed it and invited us over to share their table and food. We talked, or atleast Takeya and Nagayama-san talked in mainland Chinese, and I mainly just listened. The booze continued to flow, until finally around 5 I stumbled into a Taxi with Takeya (who was staying at my house) and made my way haphazardly towards home. (Directory of three sound files of this event.)

10th vlog - buddha in hong kong

Kayo and her sister Mari came to visit me from Japan. We had a tourist blur trip around Hong Kong. In this video you can see us at a giant Buddha in front of a living Buddhist monastery. They can be seen as the video swooshes past them to see the big Buddha statue. The video then pans down to the monastery far below and ends with a soft glimpse of hills beyond.