The hanabi festival.

So I got back from Korea on Friday and Saturday (July 28th) was the Hanabi (Fireworks festival) festival where I went to with some Japanese friends. Ruriko-san in a Yukata, on our way where the Festival is going on:

 The following picture is just to show you how packed it is (bad quality). All the area was packed with people... I wonder how many people there were.

 OK, I'll leave it to this for now. Bye

Pusan, Korea

So, as you already know, I went to Korea. I'm not sure of how to get started with this post. It went by so quickly... Too quickly. Well let me start like this: this trip was great! I wish I could have stayed a little while longer. I landed at Pusan (Busan) International airport at around 21h. I took the underground to get to Haeundae which is where my hostel was. The undergrounds in Korea, Japan and China are all very similar to one another and they are all very handy and easy to use. I got to Haeundae without any problem and the directions given by the hostel to get there from the station were perfect. I was given a bed in a 4 girls dormitory but I was the only one there. This was definitely the best hostel I ever stayed at. It was very cosi and homy, the staff was very nice, the place was very nice and clean and there were a cute little dog and rabbit:

At about 23h, I left the hostel to find something small to eat and to have a look around the area. I ate my Korean 'onigiri' by the Haeundae beach, which was still very busy for that time of the night (24h). After that I went back to the hostel and met 2 nice guys from New-Zealand and I started chatting with them on the hostel's terrace. We decided to visit Pusan together the next day. So, the next day, we went to Beomeosa Temple, a big temple in the Northern part of Pusan.

We walked around the temple grounds and then in a nice little wood beside the temple after which we headed back to Haeundae and did not resist swimming in the sea.

When we went back to the hostel, I had a new roommate. A Korean girl who has been living in the USA since she was 9 years old. So, once again, we went to the terrace and the 4 of us chatted for a while until it was time for dinner>> Korean BBQ: Delicious!

On the next day, we all went to Gyeoungju, which once was the capital of Korea. We rent bicycles and started visiting the city. The area is very nice and there is a lot to see but unfortunately the heat and the fatigue won us over and we didn't get to see everything.

I went on a city tour of Pusan with my Korean roommate. We went to Songdo beach which is really pretty and not as packed as Haeundae beach. I don't understand why Haeundae beach is more popular because this beach is definitely a lot nicer. They actually have a nice sculpture, in the sea, of a whale who's head and tale come out of the water:

The two of us went to a famous fish market where we walked around and then decided to have lunch there. So we had Korean 'sashimi' (raw fish) and grilled fish accompanied by Soju (Korean drink):

After lunch, we walked around in a local market for a while before heading back to the Hostel where we both had to get ready for our departure the next day.

And that was Korea... I definitely can't bring across how amazing that trip was with just this, but at least now you know what I've been up to ;-)

Back to posting - my week before going to Korea

Hi guys. Well, as you have noticed, I haven't been very active on my blog during the last weeks. This is not because I didn't want to or had nothing to tell, but mainly because I have been quite busy. So I'll try to remember everything I wanted to tell you guys.

The week before I left to Korea, the weather became really hot! Mushi-atsui, as you'd  say in Japanese. It's very hot and humid and you're covered in this thin layer of sweat all over within minutes of leaving any air-conditioned place... It's very hard to motivate yourself to go out in this weather, but luckily, I've still been meeting with friends quite a bit. I went to walk around Tokyo Dome with a Nepalese friend. I went to the 'Design Festa Gallery' (small art gallery for students) in Harajuku with Takeo-san. She was working in the hostel where I stayed at during the month of June. The gallery was great, the building was very original as well, and I regret not taking any pictures... They have this fun original café and Okonomiyaki and Monjayaki restaurant in the gallery so we decided to have lunch there:

 Followed by shaved ice, which was great considering the hot weather:

I went to a small Edo museum nearby the shared house I'm living in. The aim of this Edo museum is to give you and idea of what a town looked like during the Edo-period. So, you basically enter a small fisher's town during the Edo period and you can walk into the town, enter the houses, check out all the material and tools they had back then. Herewith a small overview:

The quality of the pictures isn't very good, I'm sorry. It was a little dark and my phone has no flash.
So what else... I went to have sushi with some people from the guesthouse. The sushi was delicious and we had a lot of fun:

From left to right, China, HongKong and Germany. France was sitting beside me, so he's not on the picture. Xue-Yao (China) is my roommate. I'm glad because we really get along. She is studying in Germany, Aachen (yep, right by the Belgian border) and is doing an internship here, in Tokyo. She's going back to Germany towards the end of September.

I went to a concert of a Canadian-Japanese band I really like with France and France's Japanese girlfriend.  It was great!!! I have no pictures for you though... (They were not allowed). The band is composed of a Japanese drummer, a Japanese bassist and the guitar and vocals are done by two Canadian brothers who have both been living in Japan for around 10 years I think. Most of their songs are in Japanese but often contain some English (like ALL Japanese songs). They have a few songs in English as well though. I think France and me were the only foreigners in the crowed, which consisted of people of all ages and styles. The dynamics were great :-)

On the night before going to Korea, France had his going away party. He's a great cook, so he cooked some traditional Japanese dishes for us and then we left to a live house. I liked all the bands that played, even though they all had different genres. We had a lot of fun! Some of the guys went Karaoke-ing after that, but I went to bed because I still had to pack and get ready for my trip to Pusan, Korea.

I'm pretty sure I forgot to tell you about some things I originally wanted to mention, but I think this is enough for this post.

Short information notice

Hi guys,

Some of you already know, but not everyone so I decided to post the info here as well:

I decided to prolong my stay in Japan. So instead of going back to Belgium by the end of this month, I'll be staying in Japan until the end of September. Of course, due to my tourist visa, I can't just stay in Japan for longer than 3 months in a row so first I need to leave the country. As a result of this, I'll be going to Pusan (or Busan, depends in which language) in Korea for 6 days, poor me... Korea certainly is a country I want to visit (being interested in Asia aso) so I'm quiet happy I HAVE to go now. I checked out flights for almost all the Asian countries that do not require me to have a visa to enter them, and Pusan in Korea was the cheapest, so there I go.

Don't hesitate to mail me should you want more info concerning my stay in Japan.

Bye bye,


Chloé

City trip

Hi all,

Today I went to Kamakura with Ruriko-san and Yuka-san. Actually, first we went to Enoshima on a peninsula and enjoyed the view from there:

We had lunch there as well:

After that we hopped back on the local train and got off at Hase where we were able to see the Daibutsu (giant buddha):

Just to give you an idea of how big it is, you'll notice that behind him, at the height of his crossed legs, there is a roof. That roof was quiet high as well... I'd say it was at about 2m50 from the ground. I had seen pictures of the Daibutsu before, but I have to say a picture does not portray how big it feels when you are standing in front of it.

After the Daibutsu we went to Kamakura. We strolled up a famous shopping street which was really nice and stopped at a small japanese style cafe to have traditional sweets:

So, the white scare in the middle is sesame seeds tofu. you eat it with the brown paste (which is actually more reddish in real life), red beans paste (very sweet), or with the green mousse, green tea mousse. In the smaller bowl in the right back corner is some kind of jelly (I'm still not very sure of what kind of jelly) and you eat it after pouring the sweet brown sauce that is in the small bowl in front of the jelly. It was very tasty!!! After talking away and resting for a little while in that cafe we walked around Kamakura for a little while longer:

And then we headed to the beach hoping to see the sunset from there. Unfortunately, we didn't really see the sunset, but its was still very nice out there so we stayed there and talked some more:

All in all, I had an amazing time. Ruriko-san and Yuka-san are really nice and we get along very well which is great. We are planning to do some more things together so I'll keep you posted.

Byebye :-)

Moving, saying goodbye and meeting new people

Some of you might be aware of this, but I moved out of the Hostel to move into a guesthouse/shared house. The reason is purely economical as I was having a great time at the hostel I was staying in. Some of my friends there were staying for just as long as me if not longer and some people of the staff became good friends as well. So moving meant I had to say goodbye to some of the staff. Of course, I can still go there and say hi, which I do, but some of the staff is moving as well so there were some goodbyes:

As mentioned before, I am now living in a shared house. So basically the living room, kitchen and bathrooms are all shared. Some of the rooms are individual and some are shared, but there are maximum 2 people in one room. It is kind of a small version of a hostel except there is no staff. Herewith a picture of the living room/kitchen:

And a picture of the room I share with a fun Chinese girl that studies in Germany and does her internship here in Tokyo:

Her English is very good and she's really cool so I'm quite happy to be sharing the room with her. I'm on the bottom bed. The people I spent the most time with for now are my Chinese roommate, 2 very nice French guys and a funny English guy. The English guy is a Stand Up comedian in his free time and yesterday he had his second gig ever so we went to check it out with a bunch of people from the guesthouse. It was all in English but not all the stand up comedians were English speakers. Some were Japanese and some were from European countries. There were around 8 (only one woman) of them and most of them were new at this so there were some awkward silences but all in all it was fun.






Ok, that's it for today. Bye bye :-)