The journey to Seoul from rural Japan

Kansai Airport Station

Going back through old albums I realized I never wrote that much about my trip in Seoul in March of 2014. I was living in rural Japan, busy working during the week, and at that time in March, I was preparing for two overseas guests to visit me for a moth. I probably didn’t have time to reflect on all the interesting things I experienced in Seoul. I was probably consumed with preparation for my guests, planning more trips, and just trying to get through the day. My three-day adventure in Seoul with one of my best friends was a wonderful experience, and deserves a place on this blog.

So I will begin again, as all things begin, with a journey.

I am surprised after taking this long trip from my provincial village to a major airport so many times that I never bothered to record how long and cumbersome it was. That is truly a feet in and of itself. Here is the breakdown:

1.    40minutes: Drive my car from my small village (Kawamoto) to a bus stop in a nearby but slightly larger town (Oasa). The drive is on a one-lane road with no street lamps. In the dark, it's a little lonely and scary. There are often monkeys, boar, or other animals that come out onto the road so you must be very alert and careful. 9 out of 10 times I would be the only car on the road for the entire journey. I remember this feeling like the lonliest part of the trip.

The road from my village to the bus stop

2.    1 hour and 20 minutes: Board the Iwami Express from Oasa station to Hiroshima Station. This bus come every hour and takes people from Oasa (on the outskirts of Hiroshima prefecture) to the main Hiroshima Station. It is quite popular and usually fills up by the time we get to the station. I always rode this bus because the only bus that comes directly to Kawamoto leaves only once a day, and doesn’t line up well with things like flight schedules.

3.    1 hour 30 minutes: As soon as I arrive at Hiroshima Station I jump on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Shin-Osaka station. If I am traveling during peak season I will have tried to purchase my shinkansen ticket a week or so in advance. Otherwise, I just buy it at the station for the next departing train. They leave from the upper platform, so then I ascend the escalator, find my reserved seat on the train, and relax for an hour and a half.

4.    50 minutes take local train (Limited Express Haruka) from Shin-Osaka Station to Kansai Airport Station. Once I arrive in the bustling Shin-Osaka station, which feels worlds away from my tiny quiet village, I maneuver through the crowds to transfer to a local train which will take my directly to Kansai airport. I can usually get a seat on the train, and the journey lasts for almost an hour.

5.    2 hours: Board a plane from Kansai Airport to Incheon Airport. The business at the airport is usual – I arrive about two hours early, get my tickets, and go through security. Japanese airports are pretty efficient and predictable. For this particular trip to Seoul, I met my friend at the airport station and we got out tickets together. Though I had been traveling all day, it felt like my trip began at that moment.

6.    1 hour: Ride the Express train from the Airport to Seoul Station. Once we landed in Seoul, we were relieved to find that their train system is just as robust and efficient as Osaka’s or Tokyo’s. It was very easy to catch a train from the airport to the main station, but it did take almost an hour.

The long train ride from the airport to Seoul

Total travel time: 7.3 hours, not including waiting at the airport, or the waiting for buses or trains in transit. In other words: all damn day.

Photo Diary: School Lunches in Japan

The best thing about working in a public school in Japan is the cultural exposure. Here you get to see a side of Japanese society that tourists typically don’t see, but ironically, my first exposure to school lunches was as a tourist of 14 years old. For one day I visited an elementary school with my Japanese friend and ate lunch with the kids. I remember having a yogurt drink called Yakult, which I thought was the most delicious thing on the planet. My memory of the school lunch was divine and I couldn’t wait to have them when I moved to Japan. 

Japanese school lunches are a strange affair. 

On one hand, they are touted and being the epitome of healthy eating: hyper-local, hyper-seasonal, balanced to the point of obsessive.

Yet on the other hand they are  often over 1,000 calories a lunch (fine if you’re on a sports team, but for anyone else, hello weight gain), extremely carb-heavy (like, pasta with a side of bread and a cake for dessert), and very processed (some items like cheese are past the point of recognition). 

The other thing is, not all lunches are created equal. There are some districts that have appalling lunches, as documented by the resident English teachers here and here. Then there are districts like mine, where the school lunch is actually…not bad. 

I didn’t photograph the lunch every single day, so these shots are of lunches that particularly fascinated me, whether for better or worse. 

Mizu No Kuni: MUSEUM104゜

The entrance

The wild. The weird. The wonder. The Mizu no Kuni (Country of Water) MUSEUM104゜

Nestled in the mountains of Shimane prefecture, I must have drove past this place a thousand times before I ventured inside on my very last day in Shimane. When I went in, I immediately regretted not going sooner. This is the kind of place I might have liked to go every month, if anything just to be there. I have no excuse for not going there sooner or more often, except that I knew too little about it to be intrigued. Indeed, if you google this museum in English or Japanese you will find almost nothing except its location – which is obscure - and opening hours – which are sparse.  Indeed, when I went there I had only an hour to spare, and I had to race through the enormous exhibits and sprawling landscape just to see it all.

Little is recorded on the internet about this wondrous place. Part contemporary art and part quirky science, it’s an odd blend of attractions.  The first thing to experience in the museum is the building itself, a sleek modern edifice, strangely complements the century-old homes and ancient landscapes that surround it.  It is technically located in the town of Sakurae, which is an unincorporated hamlet in the bigger town of Gotsu, which runs from the mountains to the mouth of the Gonogawa River.  

Walking to the ticket desk was an experience in and of itself

Designed after Noah's Ark

The mountains are always in the background

A sobering exhibit

The "treehouse"

Small art can be found everywhere

Like the Bosch devil on his thrown

After looking at the outdoor exhibits, one ventures inside to see the modern art installations.

According to http://www.sakurae-kanko.jp,  the best way to describe this museum is "a facility that thinks, feels, knows, and enjoys 'water.'"

「水」について考え、感じ、知り、楽しむ施設です。

Why water is in quotation marks (in Japanese they look like 「」) is a curious observation. My reasoning is that the concept of water here is not merely physical. It is a place to explore water the metaphor, water the life-giver, water the destroyer. Many of the artworks were difficult to interpret. I should mention that the museum has not English language signage or literature, but even with that I'm not sure I would have understood everything. 

I decided to make myself part of this sculpture

A metal fish that moves 

One room of the museum was three floors and dedicated entirely to a single exhibit, which consisted of a film of slow-moving lights, accompanied by harmonious sounds, giving one the impression of being at the bottom of the ocean. During the exhibit, visitors climb up a shallow ramp, slowly ascending three floors, all the while viewing the light show and hearing the sounds from different angles. As you ascend, your perspective changes, and by the time you are at the top it is as though you are watching an entirely different show. The top is a dead-end, and you descend down the shallow ramp exactly the way you came. 

Ascent

The artworks stand in contrast the museum’s second building, which is set up like a kid’s science exhibit. I enjoyed being there alone on a Sunday, where I could play with all of the machines, making bubbles and whirlpools, and watching the power of water in it’s many forms. 

Science amazes my simple mind

Condensation board

Making a whirlpool

Coupled with the total isolation of rural Japan, and the oddness of these exhibits, the Mizu no Kuni is definitely on of the strangest museum I have ever visited. Of course this place is not to be missed if you ever find yourself in Gotsu, Japan, and may well be worth a trip there just to see it. When the once-obscure Izumo Taisha has become a popular tourist destination, stay off the beaten path and make the pilgrimage to this place. 

The lush greenery of the mountains grows everywhere