My J-Trip Tale

Here I am*.

It's a beautiful day: mild weather, blue skies, cool breeze bordering on almost chilly, bright sun. I'm sitting on a low wall leaning up against what appears to be a parking meter. All around me silentced randoms pass, walking or running, intently focused on the next five or so feet ahead. Cars zipping by on the wrong side of the road

I could be anywhere in the world. anywhere at all. I can't read the alphabet, don't speak the language, can't even so much as count past five - if I'm lucky enough to make it that far. Utterly dependent on the almost brackishly overbearing humility of shopkeeps pushing their English skills to the limit as we pour over my trusty tourist map.

But to be honest, I'm just glad to be sitting down.

It's been an interesting day so far. I'm waiting for three to roll around so that I can check in to my motel. I can feel te rising sting of a sunburn on the left side my neck as I write. I'm I'm about a litte in to the bottle of water to help cull tue rawness that still haunts me from last nights ferry ride.
My penchant for schmoozing with military types paid off again. Before boarding the ferry, I ran into a soldier (haircut gave him away), and over the course of the ride he, his girlfriend and I became acquainted over soju, mokari, and dirt cheap Japanese beers out of a vending machine. The running joke was something along the lines of "we're still in the port??! We only have x bottles left for the rest of the night!!!" And we were there a while. They let us on at seven, we didn't leave til around 1045.
The whole ferry experience is a trip inof itself. I opted for a second class ticket because I was able to swing a student discount on it. On the slow ferry, it's an all night thing, so you get put up in rooms. The second class rooms look something like a locker room with carpeted floors and no benches. There's a sleeping mat folded in three with a blanket and a pillow that looks like a yoga block, all tucked into the bottom cubby. Above that is a shelf with a coat rack where you put all your stuff. By the door is a wooden cabinet for everyone's shoes. No partitions, no barriers, just prayers that your ten new best friends don't fart/snore/talk while they sleep.
So after talking about life, love, and how much hotter Japanese girls are compared to Koreans (his theory, but while not completely true, has it's merits), we look around, see that its one am, and the only other people about are passed out old people who, despite dressing like different genders, are frighteningly androgynous. That's our cue to call it a night. I stumble in, pass out, and am woken up at 639 by the polite bell tones and even more polite voice of the woman who'd been on the loudspeaker all last night. There's a certain kind of pain that can only be conjured by soju. The last thing any poor soul needs while trapped in such throes is a sickly sweet six am wake up call. I attempt to shake the cobwebs from my brain, get ready, find my compatriots, and wait to disembark.
Just a tip. Unless it's a cruise or you have someone waiting for you, don't get excited about disembarking a boat when arriving in a new country. Don't rush either. Customs is just behind that hatch, and with it, even more waiting. After an hour or so I finally clear customs, eat a bowl of ramen for breakfast (handmade, not instant) and hop a bus towards the Korean consulate.

Now, the big difference I notice right away between Korea and Japan is how well put together everything and everyone seems. Korea is afflicted with a relatively new cultural mentality dubbed "Balli!! Balli!!" or Hurry!! Hurry!! My understanding is that it's the product of desperate poverty after WWII and the Korean war. Hard times, a shattered country and a nonexistent economy prompted everyone to scramble to work as maddeningly hard as they could. For better or worse, it worked. Samsung and LG are the country's flagship examples. But the get it done yesterday shows in every aspect of life. Life has become something out of a palahnuik-ian dystopia. Life is about working too hard, checking off things in your 'milestones' list rather than 'bucket list' keeping up with the 'jeon'ses and pursuing pastimes that either display status or are simply popular. Even in the architecture it's apparent - the Mad scramble to fit every square inch with commercial space without regard to aesthetics can make one blind.
Meanwhile, from what little I've seen of Japan its a place of staunce reserve and perfectionism**. I've never been so heartily greeted passing a restaurant I had no intention of eating at. Or, how neatly they fold your bag at Krispy Kreme. The best way of explaining it that I can think of is as such: you don't focus on the world around you, but rather what you're doing/supposed to be doing, and do it so fucking well that it garners you praise. Also, there's an almost uncomfortable amount of humility, at least for me. Something about being doted on like that is just strange. I'm not a man of status, just a weekend traveler, and for me to believe otherwise seems almost arrogant, hence my discomfort. Haha, maybe its my ego revolting against being subdued so much when trying to reflect the same level of humility.
But still, Japan has been quite the experience. Compared to Korea, the food is MUCH more palpatable for foreigners. I mean, the staple seasonings are soy sauce, curry and (deep) frying. I havven't found anything anywhere near on par with kimchi as far as exotic tang goes. AND ITS SOO FRICKING GOOD!! I had Ton Katsu for dinner one night, NEVER has ANYTHING fried tasted so delectable! Sorry Roscoe's, but it was better than your fried chicken. The good news is they didn't have waffles. The bad news is they served it with curry. Sorry Roscoe's.

So, upon checking into my room, they inform me that they don't take Mastercard. I begrudgingly drop my last few thousand yen on the room because I'm in need of some kind of rest and refuse to walk any farther to get it. My hangover is starting to look more like an aggravated cold than anything. I nap for a few hours, wash up, and get a call back from my school. They're not going to give me a pin number, so I'm forced to rely on the ATM card and the few hundred yen I have in coins to get me back to the ferry terminal. This, compounded by the fact that its seven thirty and I'm still not well is making me wonder if its best that I stay in for the night. NOT what I wanted to do. So, I go see if there's dinner to be had at the enormous ten story mall/train/subway station, and with any luck I can use the card to get me around there.
My trek for dinner only frustrates me even more. Japan isolationism is still kicking. They have their own system of plastic, and I had to hunt for fourty minutes across two whole floors of restauraunts before I found somewhere that took Mastercard. If you travel there, remember, cash is king. I ended up eating at Family Mart the rest of my trip. NOT EVEN MCDONALDS TOOK MASTERCARD!! And of course, the subway didn't either. The only good news was that I was able to find somewhere to exchange currency in the mall, which came in handy because I knew that I needed it to pay the port fees to get back to Korea. But that doesn't mean I had enough to go do anything.

So, back at my room, dejected and downtrodden, the words of the great philosopher/ass kicker Bruce Lee ring through my head, "To hell with circumstance, I create opportunity!" and I say screw it, I can blow 400 yen and figure the rest out later! The rest of the night wasn't all that amazing, but I had fun. I did get my Bachata in Fukuoka, so I'm happy about that. It was this TINY little hole in the wall, run by a Dominican-American who'd spent fifteen plus years in the Navy, most of that in downtown SD when it was the bad part of town. He even bought me a beer. I checked out this other place called the Happy Cock, which had signs all about it warning foolhardy partiers about all the perils of being utter dumbasses. My personal favorite being tripping the elevator's earthquake detection system. Apparently rocking the elevator even a little bit would buy you a $400, 13 hour stay. But in spite of all the promise, it was quite dead, and being that the last subway train back to my place was at midnight, I opted to head back.

My final morning was utterly boring. I checked out and read at a local mall, ate lunch at the Family Mart in the Fukuoka Hilton, got my visa, charged a $20 cab ride to the boss' card, and was off to Korea on the high speed ferry. Only thing of note the whole day was that I still have 1k yen left in my pocket, (about 15 bucks Korean) and that for some reason, high speed ferries have seatbelts. I was wondering how likely it was we'd hit anything that required us seatbelts, or how effective they'd be in taking us from 250mph to zero as just a simple lap belt. I bet it'd cause a bit of injury. Oh, the illusion of safety.

And, well, that's it.

*Or, more appropriately, there I was when I started writing this.
**(I realize that my conjecture is based on a very small sample of mostly touristy areas, that I could be be comparing apples to oranges, or maybe in a better analogy Detroit to West LA, and I'm using cultural heuristics to fill in the gaps. In a nutshell, I could be waaay off)