New Years Day

This post is going to be short, but sweet. Well, short at least. New Years Day was one of recovery, we only ventured out to visit one sight while Kelsey stayed in and watched Back to the Future.

We figure since we were in Japan, why not do what the Japanese do? There's some kind of popular phrase about Rome like that. We went to check out the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa and found out that this really is what all the Japanese are doing.

The area we visited is called Asakusa, a pretty cool name which also ends in USA. It is home to a large Japanese brewery called Asahi. I found out later that this picture I had taken is of the Asahi headquarters, where the building on the left (slightly obstructed) is made to look like a mug of frosty ale. There's also a giant yellow blob.

So we made it to the area of the temple and it turned out a few hundred thousand people also wanted to visit that day.

The direct line for the temple was super long. Like three blocks down the row of souvenier shops and then another block or two. PACKED. We snuck down a side alleyway to try to get a peek and found sort of a shortcut to the temple. We got lucky and the traffic controllers let people from the sides in across the main route to go to the shops. We went in there, ducked inside of a shop, and joined the main route. We weren't going inside the temple anyway, so it wasn't that bad of a thing to do. This is a view of the shop alley:

This is one of the impressive temple buildings, but I don't think it's the main one. How's that for informative?

A dog we met along the way:

This was one of my favorites, this 5 story pagoda. Impressive:

We walked up near the temple, then went off to the side because we weren't sure what we would do once inside the temple. It was nice that all along the sides were stands with great Japanese food. By great Japanese food I mean all of the chocolate bananas you could ever want.

Here's one of the non-chocolate banana food stands:

This is a coy pond that I enjoyed:

Well, like I said, this one post is nice and short. I expect the one tomorrow to be more exciting since we went to Tokyo National Museum and the Edo Tokyo Museum. I took about 200 pictures that day so check back tomorrow.

The Folks Came to Korea

As I mentioned last time, this is the first of my series of posts where I describe when my parents and little sister came to Korea, and then we all went and met my older sister and her husband in Japan. I figure I'll wipe out all of the Korea stuff in one post so I can get to the Japan posts quickly. It was actually a really good time spent in Korea, though.

My parents and sister, Kelsey, ended up leaving the states on Christmas eve, and then flew for about 12 hours while experiencing a time change of 13 hours. This meant that they basically flew for the entire time it was Christmas. How nice of them.

It was just a simple matter of hailing a semi-shady taxi to my town from the airport in Incheon, well known for shady taxis. This guy seemed like he didn't like silence and kept talking about the long bridges he was going over. Except by talking about, I mean that the only words he know about long bridges were 'long bridge,' so he just said that over and over. After paying a fair price, we arrived safe and sound at my somewhat tiny apartment where we all were staying and celebrated Christmas with the help of my 12" Christmas tree I bought for about $8. It was nice.

The next day was a full day to spend in my town of Seosan, Korea, so I tried to make it worth while. The morning included a small tour of the town around where my school was and to a nearby temple. It's a really beautiful temple, called Sogwang-sa, and I'm planning to write a post about it sometime soon. See picture:

We had a nice lunch of sushi, and then toured the market nearby my home which has a pretty impressive amount of sea food. That night was definitely the most exciting one in Korea, and one of my favorites of the time that I spent with my family. For dinner we had what is called Korean barbecue, where meat is cooked on a grill at the center of the table and wrapped in a lettuce leaf along with toppings, as I had mentioned before. The dinner was complete with some soju and a few beers bought by the guy at the table next to us. We then went to norebang (singing room) and cranked out two hours of well sung favorites. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I don't have any photos of this part. That was nearly the end of a great day, which was eventually capped off with Dok Bokki (what my sister calls Korean fire noodles) and some ice cream.

The next day was off to Seoul by bus. We left late morning and had a small hangup at the Bus terminal in Seoul where the taxi drivers didn't know where the hotel was and also didn't want to take us because it was in a really close neighborhood. We eventually got a taxi to take us to a nearby hotel where a desk worker called our hotel to bring the manager to walk over and get us. No problem. This hotel ended up being top-notch for what the price was, so If you are ever in Seoul looking for a cheap stay look no further than the Cello Hotel. The manager speaks great English and will go to great lengths to make the stay enjoyable.

This is a photo walking back to the hotel that night.

That day, Sunday, was spend eating Thai food at my favorite Thai place outside of Thailand, called Thai Orchid, located in Itaewon. They pretty much lived up to my promises of great food so I was happy. We spent the rest of the day exploring a part of Seoul called Insadong which is in some ways like a giant souvenier store. There are just dozens of shops, museums, and souvenier stores for virtually any Korea related gift. I also saw this robot:

A few stands had this traditional Korean candy made from stretching sugar strings into hundreds of strands and wrapping them around assorted nuts all while doing this chant about how great the candy is. It was definitely worth a photo and the candy ended up tasting OK.

An outdoor mall building had this directory of stores, and my dad noticed something interesting top-center:

Yeah, so no comment on that one. That capped off what I thought was a really enjoyable experience in Korea. I think Kelsey and my parents had a favorable impression of the country, even if the amount of snow we got on Sunday in Seoul made things a little difficult. Actually there was only one restaurant open when we were trying to get food delivered to the hotel, but the manager there was excellent enough to find it and order us some delicious chicken. See you tomorrow for a Japan post!