Hello Kitty – Where to, Gumshoe?

April 10, 2016

We woke up later than we planned on but the bed was really comfortable. Tim researched that high tide in Miyajima was around 11:00am so we were still good on time. We checked out of the hotel and left our bags there around 9:30am. We decided to just walk to Hiroshima Station since we just missed one of the street cars and didn’t see any other one in the near distance. The walk was actually really nice and refreshing.

We made it to Hiroshima Station with a bit of time to spare as the next train leaving for Miyajima was at 10:13am. I bought a tuna onigiri (110 JPY = $1.30 CAD) and grape juice (100 JPY = $1.20 CAD) from 7-Eleven for breakfast on the train. The train ride to Miyajima was only about 20 minutes (Tim: we caught an express train that only made a few stops), so it was a quick ride there. Once we arrived, we had to take a short ferry across to Itsukushima, where the famous O-torii Gate is in the water.

When we got off the ferry and walked a short distance through town towards the shrine and O-torii Gate, we were greeted by some friendly Japanese deer.

After we finished walking through the shrine and temple area. We walked around the streets of vendors, which mostly sold a Miyajima specialty called, “Momiji Manju”, which are pancake like cakes shaped in a maple leaf. Another popular local dish are oysters prepared all ways: fried, grilled, or raw.

We had to keep a close eye on the time since we had to return to Hiroshima, grab our bags from the hotel, and be back at the train station by 4:17pm to head to Osaka. Surprisingly, we didn’t feel as rushed as I thought we would, we were ahead of schedule by about an hour so I felt a lot more relaxed than I did yesterday thinking about today (Tim: just thinking about the possibility of not being on time can stress Kait out).

We made our way back to Hiroshima Station to have lunch. Since we failed at eating tsukemen last night, Tim found that there was a Bakudanya at the train station! Considering we were only in Hiroshima for 24 hours, we were able to eat two dishes that they’re “most known for”: okonomiyaki and tsukemen.

The final consensus was that Tim’s cold tsukemen was better. I can imagine eating it on a hot summer’s day, it would be really refreshing. I like how they give you paper bibs since there is a lot of splashing when you dip your noodles into the soup. (Tim: You can also choose the level of spiciness, with the (sane) range going from 1-20. I chose 3 and felt like it was a reasonable level of spice. You can go extreme and get levels up to the 100s though… I shudder to think.)

After lunch, we walked back to the hotel. We were really full from lunch so it was good to walk it off. The sun started coming out so it was actually really warm walking back. We had to switch to the shadier side of the street. We got back to the hotel and picked up our bags and caught the street car back to Hiroshima Station. I was happy that we were able to walk to and from the station and only took the street car back when we had our heavy backpacks (saved ourselves 640 JPY = $7.70 CAD) (Tim: and more importantly, got to take in the sights and sounds of the streets as a pedestrian).

We got back to Hiroshima with a half hour to spare before boarding our train to Osaka. It was important we didn’t miss this train because we were meeting Tim’s Great-Aunt (7th Aunt on my Dad’s Mom’s side) on the platform at the station. She knew our train number and which car we were in and said she would be waiting on the platform for us (she also does not have a cell phone). Once we arrived at Shin-Osaka station (after a 1.5hr ride from Hiroshima on the high-speed rail), she was there waiting for us!

Tim’s Great-Aunt has been living in Osaka since she was 26 after finishing her medical degree there. She came to our wedding (we just realized it’s our 6 month anniversary already), so it was nice to be able to see her again this year. Tim doesn’t know her exact age, but she’s still working 4 days at week at the hospital (very impressive).

We took the subway to the hotel she booked for us for a week to drop off our bags before dinner. Osaka definitely feels like a huge city compared to Hiroshima and Fukuoka. I could only imagine what it would be like when we get to Tokyo. Tim says it’s good I eased my way into Japan, so I wouldn’t be so shocked going to Tokyo.

Tim’s Great-Aunt is very kind and hospitable and booked us at the Sheraton Miyako Osaka for a week when she found out we were coming to Osaka. This hotel is the nicest hotel we have/will stay at on our trip (Tim’s scared I’m going to get spoiled now). When we walked into the lobby with our huge backpacks and our hoodies, it felt like we didn’t really belong. Our room is on a the 18th floor so it has great views of the city. It is a normal North American sized room, which feels huge compared to the Japanese sized rooms we’ve been staying at the last few days. We’re both really happy to be able to just settled down here for a week.

Once we dropped our bags off, Tim’s 7-Yi Ma (Great-Aunt) took us for dinner at a restaurant in the mall that’s connected to the hotel. The restaurant was on the top floor of the mall and specialized in unagi. Tim mentioned that last time he was here with Jessica, his Great Aunt always took them out for unagi so he predicted we would have that for dinner as well, and he was right. She ordered dinner sets for us as well as an appetizer of tamago (egg) with unagi inside and a skewer of unagi innards.

After a delicious meal, 7-Yi Ma brought us downstairs to the grocery store and bought us fruit. I was joking to Tim that she probably looked at us and thought we needed to eat more fresh fruit. She bought us strawberries and oranges. Japanese fruits are all so perfect looking. We just finished eating the strawberries, they were all very sweet.

We decided to just relax in the hotel and catch up on the blog and roughly plan out our week. Looking forward to spending time in one place (with a couple of day trips close by). I think if we had to move out of a hotel room each night, I would burn out very quickly.

As always it’s so nice to have family around, and 7-Yi Ma has been so sweet to us. I know we are extremely lucky to be surrounded by such loving families.

Our total steps today: 22,000

March 30, 2015

We woke up earlier this morning to finish packing and clean up the apartment before we left for Seoul. Uncle Albert picked us up at around 10:15am and we headed to Taoyuan for our flight to Seoul’s Incheon Airport at 1:25pm. The airport is about an hour drive from central Taipei. Hopefully when we come back in a few years they will have finished the train line connecting central Taipei to Taoyuan Airport.

It was my first time flying Korean Air and Tim’s second time (he flew with them to Brazil). The flight wasn’t full as they moved us up about ten rows when we checked in at the counter. There were a lot of Americans on our flight as it was a code share flight with Delta and it seemed like a lot of people were connecting through Seoul en route back to North America.

We had about an hour to kill at Taoyuan before our flight boarded. We decided to have lunch, unsure if we were going to get anything to eat since the flight was only 2 hours. There was only one restaurant near our gate that served Taiwanese set rice sets and noodles. We shared a pork chop rice set and I got a drink from the vending machine since it was priced the same as outside the airport at 20 NT = $0.80 CAD.

Our flight went by pretty quickly and we did end up getting a meal on the plane – oh well, now we know. We landed in Seoul-Incheon at 4:30pm (South Korea is an hour ahead of Taiwan). Looking out the window, it was a sunny day but it was very hazy so it was hard to even see the mountains in the distance. We haven’t seen a clear blue sky in a while.

When we got off the plane, we had to take a tram to immigration and baggage claim. Once we got off the tram, we went to the immigration area and the line up for foreign passports was crazy. It took us about an hour to get through customs (I hate line ups!). After we got through and went to the baggage area, all the bags from our flight were already taken off the carousel. We found our backpacks and headed to the bus area.

The bus area was another gong show. We had to take bus #6015 to get close to our hotel which is in the Myeong-dong area of Seoul. We lined up to board the bus then and realized we needed to buy tickets from the ticket counter before boarding (tickets were 10,000 KRW each = $11.30 CAD). We ended up finally leaving the airport at 6:4opm. The bus ride into the city is about 70 minutes long – I fell asleep along the way and only woke up when the bus started to make stops. The bus doesn’t make any stops until you get into the city centre (which is after 50 minutes).

When I woke up, we were in the city and everything felt big, busy and bright. My first impression of Seoul is that it’s very modern looking and a bit overwhelming. Finally, we got to our stop, Namdaemun Market, and walked to our hotel which was about 3 minutes away. Yesterday, I watched the hotel’s instructional video on how to get from the bus stop to the hotel. It was really helpful and we didn’t even need to look at a map!

We’re staying at Hotel Shin Shin in the Myeong-dong/Namdaemun area. I found the hotel while looking on Trip Advisor as it has really good ratings and is one of the top hotels in Seoul that isn’t a branded hotel (and is very reasonable at $85 CAD a night). Our room is another two single bed set ups, which I picked because it was the cheapest room option (Tim and I are roommates again). The room is fairly small but very functional and everything in it is modern.

After we settled in and rested a bit, we went out to walk around and look for dinner. It was about 8:30pm and we were starting to get hungry. When we stepped outside, it felt like we were in Vancouver because of the crisp cold air (about 12 degrees Celsius). We decided to go to the Namdaemun Market to see if they had street food, but when we went there everything was closing. I think we took for granted that not all markets are night markets like in Taiwan. We walked around the neighbouring streets and mainly found restaurants filled with Korean businessmen drinking and smoking outside. It was interesting, there weren’t many women around at all and Tim kept asking if I felt uncomfortable (I didn’t). Seoul definitely has a lot more smokers than in Taipei – just based on walking around this area. It seemed like everyone was outside smoking. We looked at the restaurants that did have menus outside and noticed that the prices were a lot more than Taipei. The prices are more similar to Vancouver pricing for food.

We walked around for about an hour and then decided to go to this noodle restaurant we passed by closer to our hotel. It looked clean and had locals eating there so we decided to give it a try. The waitress was very nice and knew we didn’t speak Korean – we pointed to the pictures and ordered spicy noodles, fried dumplings and sweet and sour pork. When the food came, we were both surprised at how large the portions were (mainly the size of the dumplings). Next time we don’t need to order that much.

Everything was very good but spicy – even the dumplings. We drank all the water they gave us and Tim was sweating like crazy. I guess we’re not used to the Korean heat.

We came back to the hotel and washed up. We’re looking forward to exploring Seoul tomorrow, it’s always exciting to explore a new city together. So far we hadn’t encountered any issues with language barriers yet. I’m practicing saying thank you in Korean, “gomabseubnida”, so at least we can be polite tourists.

Step count will be updated tomorrow, Tim is sleeping already.

Gomabseubnida (Thank you) for reading!

Tag: Hello Kitty

Miyajima/Hiroshima/Osaka (Day 41): Oh Deer!

Taipei/Seoul (Day 30): Annyeonghaseyo, Seoul!