First Trip Outside of Korea: Japan

While I've not only been able to travel around Korea, I've been able to do a little traveling outside of Korea. One of the trips that I made was to go to Japan for a weekend for a very cheap price. There is a nice little deal that a travel agent offers to foreigners who have to make what people call a visa run. Most people who come to teach English don't have a teaching visa when they come, but they only have 90 days until they have to either leave or get a proper visa. So most schools will send you on a visa run to get the visa. Anyways, Susan and I took advantage of this deal and took the farry to Fukuoka, Japan.
The boat ride was quite nice as we were on the top level of the boat and at the very front. Once arriving, we headed off to our hotel and got things settled in. Then we went exploring trying to find the really cool shopping mall. On the way we found a cool park and some really neat architecture. When we found the mall, we just looked around as most things were really expensive to buy. The mall was very modern and futuristic looking. There was a pond around the mall, a stage area where there was a children's performance of Peakachu or something like that. The levels of the mall were set up so that people could stand and look down on the performance. It was pretty cool. Also in the mall were various types of fountains. The children were playing in some of them.

This is a picture of the cool looking mall.

After that we went to the underground shopping area on the way to the hotel. We didn't find anything to buy so we ended up just looking around.

After that we headed back to the hotel. The next day we headed off to find what was supposed to be a castle. We walked and found this 'castle' after about 45 minutes or so. We walked around this place for about 45 minutes looking for a castle. We ended up not finding anything. Finally someone stopped and asked us what we were looking for. We explained that we wanted to see the castle and he said that the castle was never built because of the castle that was built in Osaka. What a laugh we had. It didn't say anything about that in the book that I had.

So from there we went to a zoo and botanical garden. The zoo was interesting because the cages to some of the animals were very close that if you reached far enoungh you could touch the bars. I noticed that one person took a long piece of grass and was trying to get the attention of a leopard. I couldn't believe it. It made me so glad that the Toronto Zoo is set up much better and the animals aren't tourtured by visitors. Anyways, there were 2 things that were really funny to see at this zoo. The first one was of a bird that was trying to walk on a wire. It wobbled back and forth and almost fell off the wire, but decided to stop where it was before it fell off. The second was that in a cage was a seagul. The funny thing about it is that if I wanted to go and see a seagul I could go back to Canada and see one without paying for it because they are all over the place. The botanical garden was very nice. I was able to take pictures of all sorts of beautiful flowers.

This is an endangered red panda at the zoo. There were actually 2 of them in the caged area. Very cool.

After walking around in the hot sun, it was time to get our things from the hotel and get back to the farry port to go back to Korea. All in all the trip was very nice. On the way back we were able to meet a few people, one an English teacher, one a soldier from America posted in Korea, and the other the soldier's wife. We had an interesting talk with all of them and I learned some very interesting things about Koreans. I will share these things in a later entry.

The picture on the right is of Susan and I at the botanical gardens.

The picture on the left is of me in Japan.