Japan trip report

Hello readers. I just got back from my vacation which was centered around skiing in Japan. Overall I enjoyed the trip, but also the transportation elements were a bit long and wearying, so its nice to be home to relax for a few more days before work starts again. Does it sound weird for me to call my journey to Hadong, Korea "coming home"? it does to me, but that's how it felt.

My flight out of Seoul left in the morning so I had to leave the day before. It was my first time to Seoul, and I only had one evening and didn't know anyone in town, so I decided to visit a part of the city called Itaewon that is supposed to be popular with tourists. After spending months in a town where I could go for days without seeing a non-Korean it was almost a shock to see so many foreigners walking around. It was very international, but ultimately not really too interesting to me. I soon headed to the airport which is 90 minutes from central city, and by reputation quite friendly to travelers who arrive late at night for a morning flight.

Indeed the Incheon airport is probably the nicest I've been in. Easy layout, no lines anywhere (check-in, security, immigration services), free internet cafes next to the departure gates as you wait for your plane. For $15 I spent the night in the spa. It had showers and hot tub, sauna, cold pool. Also an "oxygen room" which made me a little light headed, and a room with very comfortable chairs that reclined to basically a twin bed, with blankets, to sleep on - or you could get a private room (basically a closet with a bed) to sleep in if you preferred.

The next day was Monday - Lunar New Year, and Australia Day, but to me mostly just another day of travel. Flight to Tokyo, then another ~6 hours from the airport to my accomodations in the mountains. Shortly after clearing customs at Narita I realized one of the big blunders of my trip. I should have changed currency in Korea. We are all used to traveling with US$, so it really shocked me how poorly the won was regarded by its next door neighbor.

I had brought cash money with me and expected to buy yen at the airport. At Incheon the commission was 5%, but I didn't change there because I thought I remembered doing it for 2.5% in the past, so I figured that at least it wouldn't be any worse in Japan. As a consequence, it was funny to watch the eyes of the customs official get wider and wider as I continued to add zeroes to the figure indicating how much currency I was bringing into the country (waiting until the end to reveal that it was not dollars, despite the origin of my passport). But the joke was on me when I found out that the exchange commission for won was an outrageous 30% on this side. I wasted little time deciding that this is not acceptable, but it did leave me in the awkward position of having to rely on just one form of payment - a mastercard that would not work in ATMs to give me a cash advance. Therefore I would have to only buy things where the plastic was accepted, or try to barter my way into some yen.

I figured this wouldn't be much of a problem in such a modern country, but when I got to the backpackers I would be staying at they told me it was a cash only establishment! Eventually I revealed this as a bluff, but I had to waste a morning investigating various failed ways to try to get some cash before I got them to cave. Then I got real nervous when they said my card was rejected! Turns out this is the result of an automatic fraud prevention thing that puts a hold on the card when big purchases are attempted internationaly. I had to call them up and sort things out.

In the end, lack of hard cash wasn't really much of a problem until it was time to get back to Tokyo. Turned out the bus company was seriously cash only so I had to scramble and take a series of rail transfers that ended up costing me an extra $60 and a bit of frustration. This is something I remember from last time in Japan - train travel is reliable and efficient, but really expensive. It cost me more for the Tokyo - Nagano (5 hrs away) leg of my trip than it did from my home to Tokyo - a trip which included a longer cross country train ride and a 3 hour flight. Actually everything in Japan is expensive, even compared to USA, but especially compared to Korea. I bet Korea resents me shelling out hard earned won to their hated neighbors.

But despite some snags I got pretty much exactly what I wanted out of this vacation. First of all some good skiing. The mountains near Nagano where I stayed where the sight of the 1998 Olympics. So I got to ski down a former olympic downhill course. Unfortunately, despite the advances in equipment in the past decade, I couldn't break the old gold medal time, mostly because they put up some moguls in parts of the course.

The mountains were pretty good. There are a bunch of resorts in the neighborhood. The biggest and best was about 10-15 min walk from my place (in ski boots) or I could wait around for a free shuttle. The mountain really was tall and broad. It would take a series of 4 lifts to get to the peak (actually the peak was another 10 min hike from the top of the last lift), and would take a good half hour if you wanted to ski all the way back down to one of four base stations. Overall I would say the mountain was only slightly less impressive than, for example, Breckenridge, where I skied with my sister last year. Unfortunately I wasn't super lucky with the weather last week. The first morning it was snowing big fat flakes so I had really high hopes, but not much powder settled. The first half of the week was bright and clear with some amazing visibility and views of range around and the town below. Then a warm front came through and it was actually raining up to about mid mountain for a day. The next day it was still warm, so the snow was thick and slushy. Then, for my last day it got cold again and started snowing. We thought there was gonna be some great thick powder but first the slush iced over then the wind came and blew away most of the new fall so that all the remained was a thick hard crust. Well, I know weather is a gamble, and I don't mind challenging conditions, except that I decided to try snowboarding for my last day. I did learn a little - one thing I learned is that I am "goofy" footed. That is, I am among the minority who prefer to put my right foot forward. But I didn't find this out until after I had rented and tried to ride regular footed gear. It is hard to learn how to carve on ice, and a lot more painful when you are falling regularly so I had to switch back to skis at midday. The place I rented from has good service in allowing me to change gear whenever I want.

Overall I spent a lot of time on the slopes, and I was really quite tired by the end of the week, and sore on my tailbone and shoulder from my failed snowboard attempt. The weekdays the mountain was so wide and empty I felt like I had the whole place to myself. On the weekend the slopes got a bit of traffic, but even then I rarely had to wait in a lift line that was more than 2 or 3 chairfulls long.

I was a little anxious about the prospect of going on vacation by myself, which is why I booked at a backpackers in hopes to meet some people to ride with and hang out with apres ski. In this I was not disappointed. My first surprise when I arrived at the resort was the number of Australians in the area. Turns out is a very popular destination for Aussies to escape their summer heat. The place I was staying was owned and run by Aussies and 3/4 of the 30 people staying there were Aussies. I got there in the evening of Austrailia day so I was immediately invited out to celebrate despite being a Yank. If you've been following my blog you know that basically my only complaint about my lifestyle over here is not having enough chances to converse in English freely using slang and subtle nuance. Satisfying this need was one of the great successes of the vacation.

I met some interesting people up on the mountains including:
a pair of friends who also teach English in Korea (just north of Seoul). One guy was a Canadian who snored louder than anyone I have ever heard. The other was from Pittsburgh, and I thought he looked a little bit familiar. Turns out I recognized him because he used to work at the Dirty O's hotdog shop at Carnegie Mellon when I went to school there. Small world.

An English woman whos been traveling around the world for over 5 years, somehow supporting herself as a free-lance photographer. Her favorite place so far: Islamabad

There was a large group of Austrailians who were planning on staying most of February. They were a wild, fun loving crew. Maybe a bit too much so as they were evicted by the management the day before I left. It was a bit of drama; they called in some local muscle in case the boys put up any resistance. Well, I was sorry for them, especially since they were told in the late afternoon - finding last minute lodging in a resort town can be difficult and expensive. Their boisterousness was to me a benefit of the place although I understand that it is unacceptable to the owners for the place to turn into a frat house, especially since the staff apparently gave a "either they go or we do" ultimatum.

Besides that there was your standard collection of random Europeans (a Finn, a couple Germans, another Brit), no Japanese locals, but there was a Korean staying there. He's a cool fellow, and lives in Gwangju which is a pretty big city just a couple hours from me. So we exchanged phone numbers and maybe I'll visit him and see some more of this country sometime.

One more random encounter: at the airport grabbing a quick bite at McDs while I waited for the plane I overheard the conversation of some folk with Canadian accents sitting next to me. It seemed they were talking about some kind of sport becuase they were using words like teams, tournament, and coach; and they used technical terms like "soft inturn release." So I took a guess and asked if they were professional curlers.Yes indeed, and they had just won an international tournament on the path to Olympic qualification. But they seemed more impressed with me for knowing what curling was than I was with them for being sports champs. Oh well, interesting things happen at the airport.

As I was traveling back to Tokyo up to arriving back in Korea I was surprised by how much I was looking forward to getting back. I went so far as to comtemplate that on average Korean people compared to Japanese are friendlier and more fun-loving, and even better looking. Have I been brainwashed? When people were asking me questions about life in Korea I had only positive things to say about the culture. Is this a case of cognitive dissonance, or am I genuinely enjoying my new life here?

My only regret about the trip was that I should have left one day earlier. My Monday travel day was your Superbowl Sunday. I can't remember the last time I missed the big game; if I was in Seoul I'm sure I could have found a foreigner sports bar open at 8:00 am. Heard it was a good game, go Steelers! Also missed another epic 5-set grand slam final between Nadal and Federer. I feel a little bad for Fed, Nadal just has his number. oh well, I'm looking forwad to them meeting again in Paris and Wimbledon.