Hi everyone, sorry for being so bad at this… Jon and I are now in Korea! We’ve been here already a week and a half. We took a boat from Shimonoseki, Japan to Busan, South Korea on June 29th. It was an overnight cruise, and it was surprisingly fun! Busan was a really great city. We arrived Sunday morning and found an English speaking church after we got off the boat. Everybody was really kind, and they took us and the other first-time visitors (about 10 of us in total) out to lunch! Apparently it’s a church tradition for them! We had bokkeumbab which is a rice dish with veggies and sauce and it was so delicious! There was a couple there who were members who took us to a bakery and then the beach afterwards. They’ve been married for about a year and a half just like us, and he grew up in Portland, Oregon! They live in Busan now.
Traveling for this long has been a little of an adjustment. Sometimes we just want to rest and not to anything, but I feel the pressure to go and see since we’ve come all this way! There’s a balance we’ve been trying to find. I think so far we’re doing a good job. I’m thankful for jon and his leadership and the way he encourages me when I want to take a day off. Even as I’m typing now, we’re just sitting in a coffee shop doing our things.
Rest of Japan:
Jon really loved the architecture of Japan’s old shrines and temples, so we made sure to visit them. Higashi Hongan-ji Temple is located in Kyoto, Japan. Most interesting facts I remember include the fact that their ropes were made partly with human hair to increase its pull strength. They had to move some really huge and heavy wood to build this temple with. While transporting wood, there was an avalanche, and many kids, women, and elderly died.
Jon loves the huge doors at the entrance of temples and castles. He’ll walk back behind the door every time to take a look at the mechanics, and I always imagine a stranger getting scared by jon when jon pops out from behind. Afterwards, we walked around this popular street with little shops and restaurants known for its cobble streets and older style buildings. We had lunch in front of this tall shrine(?) in a small restaurant. The food was really good, and the view was fantastic!
Fushimi Inari Shrine is among one of the most famous tourist attractions in Japan. This shrine located on the mountains has over 32,000 gates and sub-gates (torii). You can follow the gates up the mountain to get a great view of Kyoto. We went almost to the very top before coming back down. Strewn along the path and stairs were little shrines full of even smaller red gates. I couldn’t tell if they were worshipping the gates themselves or if it was just the symbol of the god coming into this realm. There were more tiny shrines than I could count. I also never knew quite how big this place really was!
The bamboo grove in Kyoto is another popular destination. It’s said to be an ancient bamboo grove, and the bamboo themselves really were pretty tall and very thick. I’ve never seen bamboo so thick! It was a peaceful walk but really not very large. It’s part of a monkey park and right next to a small neighborhood, quaint and peaceful.
Ghibli park was a lot different than I thought it’d be. If you’ve never seen a Ghibli movie, you need to put it on your bucket list! They are truly masterpieces, and the music itself could be a story all on its own. For beginners, I’d always recommend watching Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Ponyo. So amazing!! Ghibli park is actually just a big warehouse at an expo center. They are expanding to some other areas of this expo, but the main attraction is in a large warehouse that used to be a big swimming pool. They created a lot of the different worlds in their movies, and there were plenty of photo opportunities around the “park”. Some of these recreations were mind-blowing. I saw a pistachio that looked so real that I really thought it was a pistachio… only 20 times bigger.
In Osaka, we got to walk around this popular area full of restaurants and gaming stores. There were a lot of interesting foods that I wanted to try but I learned that most of these places charge you a fee per person to sit and eat. That’s why the prices on the menu are cheaper than normal. We didn’t end up eating at any of those places and instead found a small restaurant that had one of the best karaage (fried chicken pieces) I’ve had in Japan. It was so good!
We also got to visit Kobe, Japan which was only a quick train ride away, and we got to eat some amazing Kobe beef, the best in the world! It’s truly melts in your mouth. I don’t know how meat can just disappear in your mouth like that, but it did. It was so good, we bought a slice of Kobe beef at a local butcher shop to cook in our hotel kitchen. The slab cost us only about $10! We visited Osaka castle and saw the LARGEST piece of rock/stone I’ve ever seen in my life. I don’t understand how they were able to move this back then without all the technology we have now.
It was at Okayama Castle where we got to dress up in old Japanese outfits for free! I couldn’t hold in my laughter when they put the bald cap on jon’s head.
Bunny Island!!! The place I was most excited about!! Right when we got off the boat, we immediately saw bunnies! And not just any bunnies. BABY BUNNIES!! All the bunnies on this island are used to people coming and feeding them, and the babies didn’t run away when we walked up! They were more wary towards us petting them though. They were so so tiny!! I squealed a couple of times because I just couldn’t contain myself. The bunnies were so tiny. We didn’t see as many bunnies as I thought we would due to the rainy weather, but I am so thankful we got to visit the island!! The babies were the best part. Did I mention that they were so tiny?!?! So tiny. Just precious!!
Hiroshima was our last stop as we were ready to move on to Korea. We visited the famous sight of the Hiroshima Dome Building, and there was a bombing survivor’s son there sharing his mom’s and family’s experience during and after. We read through his booklets, and it was honestly so fascinating. He was very friendly and wanted to share everything! From my memory – His mom was 6 months pregnant with him when the bomb hit. None of his family members were at the center but his dad and grandfather I believe died soon after from exposure. His mom got cancer after giving birth but survived and she’s still alive at over 100 years old. There was a bank that, from the outside, looked like it was untouched, but on the inside everything burned and 8 out of the 18 people I believe inside died. I got a little emotional reading about everything.
Korea:
Busan was really fun! We hung out with the couple our first day there and got fried chicken for dinner. Korean fried chicken is famous for being extra crispy, but this chain’s chicken was not as crispy as I’d liked… We visited a colorful village that reminded me of this one town in Spain. We walked through and around the tiny streets in the village, and it was fun trying to figure out which way to go. Sometimes we hit dead-ends or ended up in someone’s yard. There were so many stairs because the village is built on a hill, and I would see little old grandmas slowly walking down the stairs one step at a time. We found this one staircase that was about 10 feet tall but only about 3 feet wide… I had to crawl on all fours to go up! That night we had some delicious Korean BBQ for dinner.
We visited a shrine build right next to the ocean. The architecture was really beautiful! Different than the Japanese, but still similar? Korean temples (from what I’ve seen) are painted with really colorful paints and really beautiful patterns like flowers and swans. The sunny day made the shrine and the ocean so beautiful! For dinner we went to a popular restaurant that only had 3 dishes on their menu – dumplings, broth cold noodles, and sauce cold noodles. We got one of each and got absolutely stuffed. They also provided bright orange bibs which jon really pulled off.
Geojedo is a little island southwest of Busan. The city we stayed in, Okpo, was a really big port for ship building! There’s a lot of kbbq restaurants as well as karaoke bars with female companions for those coming in temporarily for work. There’s a trail a bus ride away on a small peninsula with a beautiful view and hike. There’s also an old stone wall towards the top, but we couldn’t figure out what it was for.
Now we are in Gwangju. Jon learned from a kind man at church in Okpo that any city name with the ending “ju” means it’s an older city. So cities like Busan and Seoul are new cities with less Korean history. Today is our third day in Gwangju! We visited a place called penguin village with cute penguin art around the neighborhood, as well as the Sajik Observatory which is free to visit and has a 360 view of the city. There’s a little cafe where we sat and cooled down for a while. After we walked around a popular shopping and food district and has a delicious dinner of Bibimbap (rice and veggies), Bibimmyun (cold noodles with sauce), and dumplings. So delicious! It’s been fun and a little scary getting to use my Korean. It’s amazing to me being able to understand what they’re saying sometimes. Other times it’s intimidating because they think I’m Korean so they spew out a whole paragraph that ends in a question, and I have no idea what to answer. I just look at them blankly and laugh awkwardly. Then I look at jon as if he’d be able to translate for me. When I doubt though, I just say no thank you.
We have really been blessed to have been able to find an English speaking church every Sunday! Some have been interesting – a church in Kyoto had a discussion sermon. The pastor instead of giving a sermon, would ask us questions about the passage. It felt more like a bible study than a sermon. Some have been great! The two churches in Korea so far have both had good sermons. Bless the Lord!
Extra Photos:
The Rabbit Hole 
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