TravelBio

It wasn't long before Andrew left that I was forced to get down to business planning out...well, planning out my life.  As in, when would I leave Japan (and to where), would I be visiting my family in Ohio this summer, what would my next job be, and, more pressing, where would I sleep in Tokyo? Thursday, the day after Andrew left, I spent the night at Japanese guys apartment, which I had arranged via Airbnb.  This time, in the spirit of saving a bit of money, I wasn't looking for a private place.  I slept on a futon in Jun's living room, which worked out fine.  The only problem was he left early in the morning and didn't leave a key for me.  That meant I had to be out of the apartment by 7:30, and couldn't get back in until he got home in the afternoon.  Jun was extremely nice, and that night we went out for sushi and yakitori in his neighborhood (near Ikebukuro in northwest Tokyo). Ikebukuro, close to Jun's apartment; yet another busy area of Tokyo!...

Andrew and I were off to Tokyo, the world's largest metropolis and capital of Japan.  In terms of size, it's not even close: Tokyo has 10 million more people than the second largest metro (which happens to be Seoul, according to Wikipedia ) and comes in at over 36 million total inhabitants.  That's nearly the population of the entire state of California, or to put it another way, the whole New York City, Chicago, and Atlanta metro areas combined. View of the sprawling city from the Skytree Tower in northeast Tokyo What I am getting at, if the point isn't already obvious, is that Tokyo is huge.  I ended up spending two weeks there and only saw a fraction of the city.  And believe me, I got around.  I'll try and introduce several of the more memorable neighborhoods and districts that I saw. First off I'll touch on Shinjuku, which is where many tourists start their journey.  Tokyo doesn't exactly have a downtown - it's too big for just one - bu...

I've covered some of the great food Andrew and I had in Japan, so now let me move on to whatever else it was that we were doing between meals.  Two posts ago I touched on Osaka, the second largest city in Japan and our fist stop in the country. Osaka is in the Kansai region of Japan, which also includes Kobe and Kyoto Osaka city proper has about 2.7 million people, but that is only a fraction of the true number.  Citing population based on city limits can be quite misleading.  Take my hometown of Columbus, and Cleveland, another city in Ohio, as examples.  The population of the city of Columbus is over 800,000, while Cleveland's is less than half that.  Take a look at the metro area, or the urban core plus surrounding suburbs and commuter towns, and the comparison is flipped: Cleveland is substantially larger than Columbus. Back to Osaka - while the city itself only has a couple million inhabitants, add in the urban sprawl and surrounding ...

Andrew is much more of a foodie than I am, in the sense that he likes to plan out his meals and document them.  As for me, I certainly enjoy food and trying new dishes, but I'm often content with eating whatever I happen to stumble upon when hunger strikes.  Of all the things about Japan that Andrew was looking forward to, food topped the list.  Predictably I was less enthusiastic (that's not to say I wasn't excited about it though). Thinking back on all the meals I had in Japan, it's hard to overstate just how good the food was.  Before our trip Japanese wouldn't have cracked my top list of cuisines, but now I'm not so sure.  Sushi was never my favorite - I mean, I liked it from time to time - but I was never crazy about it.  There's just something different about it in Japan, however.  The first time Andrew and I tried it there, in downtown Osaka, the fish seemed to melt in our mouths (yes, that's a good thing).  The sushi back home ...

On to Japan! By the time we checked in to our hotel in Busan it was after 3 am.  Continuing our trend of sleeping in, Andrew and I didn't get started until after noon the following day.  Busan is the second largest city in Korea, and although its beaches draw lots of domestic tourists during the summer, the city isn't known in the West as a tourist destination.  Well Korea in general isn't high on many Western tourists' radar, but those who do come tend to flock to Seoul. We took a bus from Seoul, in the northwest, to Busan (sometimes written Pusan) in the southeast.  South Korea is about the size of Ohio, so a cross country trip is pretty quick. When it comes to beach weather in Busan May is hit and miss; it was still the beginning of the month and the highs were stuck in the 60s, so the beaches were quiet.  I still want to see Busan in the summer - I wouldn't expect to relax so much as awe at the crowds.  In the summer months it gets so...