FAR EAST ASIAN TRIP PART 2: THE BEAUTY OF SOUTH KOREA AND JAPAN

My previous post exposed some of my issues with the Asian Far East in terms of how an American feels about a foreign nation that has a history and culture that evolved to be quite different from our own. (Part 2 will discuss Greater Japan and South Korea while Part 3 will finish these areas and include the wonderful city of Tokyo.) Before moving on, I want to make a couple of comments that may be perceived as negative but since weather is not something anyone can control, I want to discuss this in the introductory paragraph. During my 12 days in the Far East, I have never encountered worse humidity. I currently live about an hour north of Houston, Texas on a lake. I have been to New Orleans and Florida in the summer. These are considered some of the most humid locations inside the United States. No place inside the United States has ever felt as miserable as South Korea and Japan. During our trip there, the weather was consistently between 85 to 95 degrees with over 80% humidity almost every single day. Since we engaged in lots of physical exercise (More on this later), upon returning to our ship, we were drenched in sweat and smelling of body odor, bad breath, and drenched clothing. This forced us to fork over sixty dollars on the ship to have our clothes washed because not only did we not pack enough to account for this humidity, but we also packed too many long sleeves and heavy pants that made the experience of walking around Japan even more miserable. Due to my own ignorance, I knew that Japan was humid in the summer. But I did not expect it to feel like wading inside swamp water during the entire trip. Just a warning for anyone that wants to visit between June and September.

To give you a summary of the trip, we experienced South Korea and Japan by water which I highly recommend. Our flight into Incheon, South Korea took a total of 18 hours counting the 14 hours from Houston to Taiwan, the one-hour layover in the Taipei airport (One of the nicest airports in my experiences), followed by another three-hour flight to South Korea. By the time we hit baggage claim in Incheon, I was mentally fried. After our drive through dystopian South Korea (Mentioned in my previous post) to board our boat, we had been up a total of 27 hours. Our itinerary was as follows:

Day 0: Incheon, South Korea (About 60 kilometers AKA 36 miles from downtown Seoul)
Day 1: Jeju Island, South Korea
Day 2: Sasebo/Nagasaki, Japan
Day 3: Beppu, Japan
Day 4: Hiroshima, Japan
Day 5: Kochi, Japan
Day 6: Osaka/Kyoto, Japan
Day 7: Nagoya, Japan
Day 8: Shizuoka, Japan
Day 9-12: Tokyo, Japan

Besides Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea, we were able to enjoy three of Japan’s largest islands, (Leaving the northern island of Hokkaido, home to Sapporo and many beautiful mountain ranges and national parks out of the equation.) Kyushu, Shikoku, and the most famous, Honshu. Every day, we spent a full day from morning till the evening in each city, ate dinner, fell asleep, and woke up the next day in a new city. This was like our experience in Europe last October where the morning would bring us a completely different and unique cultural experience. Japan and South Korea’s cultures are not that different. But the cities we went to were completely unique from one another.

AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 1: THE FOOD

Last year, I spent an inordinate amount of time boasting on this blog and to friends and family about the food experience in Europe, ranging from the pasta, to the alcohol, and raving about the perfect cup of coffee every morning no matter what country I woke up in. Of course, Asian food evolved out of a completely different region and culture and in our present day, some form of Far East Asian food is often the favorite for a discerning foodophile.
So, is it better overall than European food? NO
Is it better quality than American food? YES
Did I have some of the best Korean and Japanese food experiences of my life? ABSOLUTELY.

On this trip, I can confidently say that I had three meals that were better than any Asian food eaten inside the United States.

KOREAN BBQ: On Jeju Island, I had the best Korean BBQ of my life. The island is famous for its Jeju Black PIgs whose meat called Black Pork is used in various dishes on the island. Jeju has an area called the Black Pork Street where all the restaurants that are authorized to sell this meat are located. Due to the need to preserve the DNA integrity of this pig, bringing pork on or off the island is strictly banned. Once you taste the meat, you will understand why. Black pork cooked on a grill slowly has a richer, deeper pork flavor. One of the most incredible meals of my lifetime and not a bad experience to have on your first and only full day on South Korea land.

SEAFOOD CHINESE NOODLE DISH: Sasebo was our most disappointing day in Japan. This was not the fault of the city. Our time inside the city was too short to enjoy most of the activities which were one to two hours out of the city including Nagasaki to the south and our port time was a pathetic six hours in length (No other city was less than nine hours.). (NOTE: Sasebo is home to a United States Naval Base, and we met a couple of sailors walking through the city.) After matriculating through the city and experiencing our first Buddhist Shinto Temple (And Japan’s humidity) and their incredible miles long outdoor malls (The first of many), we wanted to try the best food the city had to offer. Inside the Sasebo train station in a dumpy corner is a Michelin Star restaurant called Nagasaki Champon Koran. You know this place is legit as all the locals will wait an hour in line to eat here while the restaurant located ten feet across the way which has the same menu sits empty. I am personally not a fan of Chinese noodle dishes. But damn it, if I ever found myself living inside this city, I don’t think I could eat anything else. This was without a doubt the greatest noodle dish I have ever eaten in my life. If anyone finds themselves in this southeastern part of Japan, I recommend going out of your way to experience this food. Plus, when accounting for the price converted into US dollars, you can eat a bowl for 8-9 bucks.

BONITO SUSHI: I am a massive fan of sushi. The big fishes like tuna and the swordfish family often have the best tasting meat that can be cooked in multiple ways. Bonito is a member of the tuna family often nicknamed “Little Tuna” by food aficionados. In Kochi on the island of Shikoku (Our only day on this island), they specialize in seared bonito sushi (Katsuo No Tataki). They cook the sushi over a raw flame often using straw as the ignition and chop it into pieces to allow the burned exterior to blend with the rare interior. Not only was this the best tuna sushi experience of my life, but this was also the best SUSHI experience ever. Inside the Hirome Market, there are various vendors that specialize in serving this type of sushi. After we spent a couple of hours at the beautiful Katsurahama Beach being unable to swim in the pleasantly calm water, we taxied over to the market to enjoy their specialty. I spent a total of three hours there eating what is the equivalent of three lunches. I tried two different types of Katsuo No Tataki and had sushi from another vendor that specialized in eel. Both restaurants that served seared bonito sushi did an incredible job. Of all the amazing things I did in Japan, I keep returning to this experience. Because when my body finally gives out and my life starts to end, I have no doubt my mind will return to this day and the experience of eating this fish.

So, you may be asking yourself after reading this, how is Asian food worse than European food? Here is your answer.

Inside Tokyo specifically, there are lots of vendors that will lie to you and sell imitation or cheaper versions of food and pass it off as legitimate. You also need to be careful with cheaper restaurants. There is a significant difference between a good restaurant with slightly higher prices and cheaper ones. The difference in food quality is quite noticeable. One night in Tokyo, we decided to eat at a Yoshinoya Beef Bowl (An American company) to save some money. It was the only food on the trip that made me feel sick for an entire evening. Because of this dichotomy and range of food quality, Europe remains the champion of the two continents due to its consistency.

AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 2: THE MUSEUMS

I have always loved museums and historical monuments, especially involving countries in which their history is mostly unknown to me. On this vacation, we experienced quite a few of both. In order, we went to Mokgwana and Gwandeokjeong which is a preserved and rebuilt administrative center from 14th Century South Korea in the city of Jeju that explains in detail how Korean culture operated hundreds of years ago.

In Hiroshima, we went to the rebuilt Hiroshima Castle (Obliterated by the Atomic Bomb) and experienced one of the most haunting experiences of my life, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. For those who think it was alright to drop an atomic bomb on a civilian population, spend three hours in that museum and come back to me. Plus, getting to see this building below in person from all the historical photos was quite a sobering experience.

In Kyoto, we got to see one of the most famous Shinto temples, Fushimi Inari, and passed through its hundreds of torii gates into the spirit world with a tour guide who gave us an interesting history lesson on the temple and the religion that the Japanese practice called Shintoism.

In Nagoya, I abandoned my family that had other interests and went to the headquarters of Toyota and experienced its amazing Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology which is fantastic especially if you are interested in the process of industrialization of the past 100 years.

A quick history lesson about Japan for any ill-informed Americans.

If you watch a Kurosawa samurai movie, you would think that Japan had that samurai culture for the entirety of its existence. And this opinion is not incorrect. Up until the mid-1800s during a period called the Meiji Restoration when the Emperor Meiji merged the country into a united whole and dispensed of the historical locally run shogunates, the country was still medieval in many ways. This restoration created the Meiji era when the country rapidly industrialized from 1868 to 1912 and became the Japanese Empire, a period that the Japanese reminisce about fondly. This event was brought about by the landing of Commodore Perry from the British Navy in 1853. The British challenged the existing Tokugawa Shogunate which led to the Japanese embracing technology and evolving into an industrialized nation under Emperor Meiji. There will be more of this history inside the Tokyo blog.

AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 3: TRANSPORTATION

I want to give a specific example of this. Of all the cities we went to, Beppu was the most unique. A city basically built on steam generated from the volcanoes that it sits upon, the city has a tourist experience (Which happened to be the most overwhelming based on the amount of people) unlike any other. Like so many others on this day, we bought the “Seven Hells of Beppu” experience which allowed us to see seven of the most famous hot springs (Onsen) in the city. Due to their location, we were only able to experience five of these “hells” (Two of them were a few miles east and require an Uber ride to reach). From the moment we left our ship, we were able to flag an Uber almost immediately for the ride up the mountain to the top “hell.” To see the remaining four, you walk down the mountain to each location. Each one has a very specific experience whether allowing you to rest your feet in the hot springs, to seeing local alligators that thrive in the climate, to experiencing an aquarium with the local fish inside tanks. Each “hell” is different. After this, we walked to a local public ONSEN where you can publicly bathe (Naked) in the hot springs with various types of water and spa experiences. Upon completing this, we ate seafood and crab cooked in steam from the area (While good, this was not the best steamed food experience. The taste of sulfur did incorporate itself into the meat.). After we were done, an Uber showed up in minutes and took us down to our ship with twenty minutes to spare. Japan has the best transportation system of any country I have been in. Whether Uber, the subway/elevated trains or how the country is built for walking, it is never difficult to get anywhere fast. Uber drivers are professional and quick. During our twelve days in Japan, every member of my family walked at least fifty miles. No wonder almost the entire population of Japan is skinny. I will discuss more about transportation in the next blog about Tokyo.

AMAZING EXPERIENCE PART 4: CLEANLINESS
​
When I went to Europe and Canada in 2024, I never thought there would be a place on Earth cleaner and more organized than those two locations. Then, I went to Japan and South Korea. If you find trash on the ground, it usually gets there by accident, whether flying out of a trash bag or a gust of wind blowing it out of someone’s hands. Despite the incredibly few trash cans scattered around the cities, there is no trash on the ground. Homelessness is practically non-existent (I only saw two people that were either homeless or mentally disturbed which includes one individual in the park that houses the Hiroshima Peace Museum.). Graffiti was in only one location under a train track near Akihabara. Three days later, I saw a Japanese worker painting it over. The Japanese have incredible pride in their country, their cities, and their people. While Incheon, South Korea looked almost too perfect like it was modeled after a video game city, Jeju looked dirtier and grimier. But despite this, there was still no trash to be found anywhere. Even in the chaos of the miles long underground market on Jeju Island, there was an order to the vendor shops with all the products scattered in an organized way along the path. The Japanese open-air markets are even more clean and organized than their Korean brethren. As an American, I admired this sense of civic duty which got my wife and I to carry our trash around all day inside our backpack till we could toss it out on the ship.
 
More amazing experiences coming next week when we incorporate Tokyo into this discussion including the incredible value of Japanese shopping related to their weakened yen, the experience of enjoying the largest city by population on this planet and its massive scale, the amazing transportation system of the big cities, the incredibly quiet communities where most of the Tokyo residents live, and the lack of any crime and the goodwill of the people as well as some more history, food and culture. Stay tuned.

---