Hello Korea!

Kyoto, Japan

We have found ourselves making a lot of comparisons as we travel.  Comparing places, people, sights, and cultures through observations is one way we make sense of our ever-changing environment. We constantly compared Japan to the U.S. when we first arrived there and after we had been in Japan a while we began comparing cities, towns, sights within Japan. It is unfair to compare Japan to the U.S., but that is the best way our brains seem to have to reconcile all of the new information flooding into them.  We figured out Japan first by learning what it isn't. It looks like the U.S. sometimes, but the history, culture, and mentality of its people make Japan very much unlike the U.S. in certain ways. Traveling from Japan to Korea caused the U.S. to fade a little more.  One step further away. But we couldn't help but compare Korea to Japan.  From the moment we arrived in Busan, South Korea around 6 p.m. on a hazy, overcast Friday evening we began comparing the two countries.

Busan, South Korea

Busan is South Korea's second largest city (after Seoul) with a population of around 3.5 million. At the time we landed in Busan, it was the largest city we had been to since leaving the U.S. The coast line where Busan is located is mountainous, making for an interesting cityscape. Busan is more Seattle than Chicago or Los Angeles since it has had to grow around the local geography. The human development rolls laterally along the coast, spilling down, out of the hills until it meets an abrupt end at the ocean. Busan is one of the largest port cities in the world and its bridges, bustling port, and towering buildings don't let you forget its size or rugged location, buried near the Southern-most tip of the Korean peninsula. Our first impressions of Korea, via Busan, were that it is dirtier, less organized, less efficient, and far gruffer than Japan.  The international ferry terminal in Fukuoka, Japan (shouts out to Azusa and family!) was nicer, newer, cleaner, and more orderly than its Korean counterpart.  Once in Korea, all passengers from Japan were funneled through a "radiation detection device" on their way to immigration.  This contraption looked more like a 3rd grade school project than it did a radiation detection device. It appeared to be made entirely of PVC bought from Home Depot and lacked any discernible power source or connection to computer devices. A friend later told us that Korea is suspicious of all things Japan, and something near hysteria had followed the Tsunami and ensuing Japanese nuclear power plant issues in early March.  We're not sure what the flimsy looking arch at the Busan ferry terminal could actually detect, if anything.

Following our uneventful 3 hour ferry ride (no whale or dolphin sightings), immigration, customs, and a brief glimpse of the royal wedding on a large flat screen in the terminal lobby, we set out in search of the subway. We noted, as we struggled a bit to locate our subway entrance, that it would have been easier to find and get to in Japan.  Once below the streets of Busan, we figured out the subway system and navigated it to our stop in central Busan with relative ease.  Finding the subway had been mildly confusing, but finding our guesthouse after exiting the subway proved to be throughly confounding. We walked around in small circles for well over an hour before we finally found our Busan home, Blue Backpacker's Hostel.  The owner greeted us with a concerned expression. "Did you get lost?"  We responded sheepishly, "Yes, we did."  She inquired as to why we didn't follow the simple directions on her website (instead of the worthless Lonely Planet map). A damn fine question.  That would have been much easier, but it also would have been practical and intelligent - two things that are sometimes very hard for tired travelers to be. 

The crafty orange tent con-woman and her prey

We settled in and left soon after in search of food.  Busan's food culture revolves around orange tents that have a few seats and serve local seafood and other street food specialties.  We wandered around hungrily searching for the perfect orange tent until we were eventually swept in by an English Speaking hype-woman.  Spoken English should have been the first sign of trouble.  We were seated next to a Russian girl and her Japanese boyfriend, who happened to have been on our ferry from Japan.  There were a few locals in the tent as well.  The owner and host was a loud, joke-cracking middle-aged woman with a broad smile and a crafty look about her.  She drank at least two big bottles of Cass beer in the short time we spent in her tent.  She also picked and served us beef mixed with kimchi, shrimp, and a few other items.  We drank a beer, ate our food (which was decent), and asked for our check.  She wrote  38,000 won on a cup, which is roughly equal to $38.  Now, this was our first meal in Korea but we knew food should be cheaper.  We knew we had been hoodwinked even as we paid.  We snapped a few pictures with the con-woman who welcomed us to Korea so honorably, and joked and grumbled about the white people tax we just paid.  We're pretty sure our ferry-mates got similar "idiot tourist" treatment, which made us feel better.  We also now knew why the con-woman had been so happy when we entered her tent, asking us where we were from, proclaiming that she loved America, grinning and shouting jokes to the Korean customers, and opening herself another beer. Her heist was a fine, "Welcome to Korea."  We laughed about it and chalked it up to the inevitable, though we didn't hesitate to note that this sort of extortion would never happen in Japan.