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!