Just Another JET Blog

Well, I should apologize to my mom. It’s been a month before I updated again. In my defense, I have been really busy. With what? Glad you asked.

…oh, it’s gonna be a long one….

Korea!

Yup. I went to South Korea. I didn’t really go sightseeing, I just hung out with a bunch of my friends there, and made a bunch of new ones too! It was a coffee shop, restaurant, mall and bar tour from one end of the week to the other. I came back absolutely exhausted and in great spirits. I’m seriously considering teaching English in Korea next year.

I took a hydrofoil boat from Fukuoka to Busan. This is essentially a boat that moves as fast as a plane. I was curious, so I went way out of my way to take it. It was cool, but I think next time I’ll take a plane. The best part was definitely seeing Busan and Fukuoka from the sea side.

Jun picked me up from Busan and took me to his town (Goseong). We hung out, had Korean BBQ and caught up. The next day, in the afternoon, I took a bus up to Seoul where Hee Young and Tyler met me at the bus station. We actually misunderstood where I would end up, and I had to end up asking a random Korean lady for help. I, speaking no Korean, finally knew what it was like to be in a country where you have absolutely NO grasp of the language. Luckily, most other people spoke a little of one of the two languages I do know. However, there was a lot of pointing and gesturing at times.

I then spent the next 5 nights at Hee Young’s parents place, who were SO nice to me. Every morning Hee Young’s mom made me a traditional Korean breakfast (one morning it was sushi!!). A great way to start the day. She even did my laundry about mid-way through the week. Her father was nice too, and took me out to eat dog with him one day for lunch. Yup, it tastes good. I also spent a lot of time (when I was at the house) playing with Yona, Hee Young’s miniature schnauzer. Having now seen schnauzer’s in Canada, Korea and Japan I’ve come to the conclusion that they all act almost exactly the same way.

During the day Hee Young often had to work, so I hung out with her friend (and my new friend) Mi Young. Mi Young is a math teacher and was on summer holidays at the time, so she was usually free during the day. She’s also incredibly fun and speaks great English. And beautiful too!

I spent almost all of my time for the 5 days with one of the two (Mi Young and Hee Young) of them and sometimes both. To be honest, it was awesome. I also spent a lot of time with other friends of theirs: Tyler (Hee Young’s boyfriend), Cain (Tyler’s friend), Kinoko (Hee Young’s friend), and Hyewon (Mi Young’s friend). I learned an important lesson from the experience. When you go to visit a country… don’t go see the sights! Meet THE PEOPLE!! It’s sooo much better!

Hee Young and Tyler drove me back down south to Jun’s town, but not before stopping off at Tyler’s family’s cranberry farm. I met more people then my memory can do justice to right now. More good times! My last night was then spent with Jun again, who drove me back to Busan the next day. It was another late night of catching up on life since we were both last in Canada. Jun claims were good friends because we were friends in a past life. I’m almost willing to believe it.

Anyways, I eventually got back to Japan and guess what happens! My old buddy Kurt shows up!

Picking up Kurt from Narita airport was SUPPOSE to be easy. But that day had several trains in Tokyo canceled because of a thunderstorm, and another few because of some kind of accident. So, I transferred 100 times as I avoided various catastrophes, but I ended up at the airport right on time for when Kurt was coming out of the gate. What a strange moment. I actually couldn’t believe he was there in front of me for the first hour or so. We checked into the ever-fantastic Sakura hostel, my little home in Tokyo, and had a sushi supper (at what became Kurt’s favorite sushi bar: Sushi Yasu (literally: cheap sushi)) before calling it quits for the night. Tomorrow would be busy.

Next day started bright and early as we toured the sights of Tokyo. Our hostel was located in Asakusa, so after checking out Sensoji Temple we moved on. Akihabara, Electric Playground amused us both for a large portion of the morning and afternoon. We discovered stores that were almost overflowing with Japanese versions of games from our youth. We also found an arcade where you get to be inside a giant robot and fight others. Very Japanese. Next was Shibuya, to see the fashionable side of Tokyo. Designer brands everywhere and enough stores to even make my mother collapse from exhaustion. We picked up a few choice items before moving on to beautiful Aoyama and then the famous Roppongi Hills Tower in Roppongi. I think I need to go to Roppongi Hills Tower everytime I go to Tokyo. Staring out at the Tokyo skyline from the top of the tower always has the exact same effect on me. The closest I can describe it is feeling somehow supercharged. It’s my favorite place in all of Tokyo. It was a long day with a lot of walking in some intense heat, and we rode the subway back to the hostel (my other favorite place in Tokyo!).

The next day we met up with my Korean friend (Kinoko, mentioned earlier) and went to Disneyland Tokyo. In the evening, we met up with Kinoko’s friend and watched an hour long fireworks display in Aoyama. More good times.

Friday was just a lot more of seeing various parts of Tokyo already mentioned and ended in a short tour of Shinjuku before getting on a bus to Hirayu. And from Hirayu I drove us to my apartment. Exausted again, it was time to crash.

We spent about a week around Hida, meeting various Japanese people that I knew (and a few that I didn’t even know before) going to ALT get togethers and just plain hanging out in my place like we used to back in Canada. It was festival time in my town, so I got to parade my friend around in front of my students, who looked on curiously. I even got a few English self-introductions out of some of them. Another afternoon was spent swimming in Kamioka’s river. I have no doubt the highlight of Kurt’s trip was the trip down to Seki, an ancient swordsmith city (now famous for its cutlery) where he picked up a katana and a knife. On the way there I even managed to put a big old dent in my car by taking a corner to sharp! Another highlight of his was probably that he got to spend a day with two Japanese kendo and iyado masters. We never did end up fishing or mountain climbing like we planned…. as it turned out two weeks wasn’t actually enough time to do everything that was in the original plan. We ended up going back to Tokyo a day early so that we could catch a Giants game. We sadly separated ways in Asakusa station. Kurt, now Japanese-ized, had now become capable of changing his own trains to Narita so that I could catch my bus back to Hirayu. I was happily surprised with how quickly he picked up the language and he was actually self-reliant by the end of the trip. Good times. He promised several people that he would be back. I intend to hold him to it!

Oh, and my hockey stick finally arrived! After 3 attempts at ordering it, it finally came!

Thing I love most about Japan today: My new hockey stick?

Thing I miss most about Canada: Having hockey sticks readily available for purchase.