Days 8 and 9: Easy Segues from Japan to Korea

The day after my trip through Nara park, I checked out of the hostel, saying farewell to it's very kind owner. She was an impressive woman, running the entire place by herself - checking guests in, doing all of the cleaning, answering all the calls, maintaining security, etc. I was heading for Osaka and had, at this point, about 2,000 yen left in my pockets (that's about $20). A word of advice for future travelers: Japan is expensive. Be prepared to overspend your budget twofold.

I was very excited for this leg of my trip in Japan because I was getting to stay with close family friends - Professor Eunja Lee and her husband and teenage daughter. Being in a home would be a nice change. Arriving at Shin-Osaka station, I fidgeted around the payphones, finally getting the damned thing to work and called them up to receive a seemingly complicated slew of directions. The phone call ended abruptly when I could no longer provide for the payphone's insatiable appetite for 100 yen coins. I looked down at my scribbled directions.

"Uhh..."

They were, however, wonderfully thorough and easy to follow. I got to my destination where I was picked up by the professor and her husband on bicycles (though not without another elaborate tango with the Japanese payphones). Again, I looked kind of ghastly. I'd run out of fresh clothes (by fresh, I mean decent smelling) and (secret) I wasn't wearing a bra. Date me?

My bag was loaded on the back of one bicycle and I rode on the back of the other. There's nothing like a cool bicycle breeze after all of that walking. When we got to their house, I was introduced to Owen - a former student of Professor Lee, native of England but now living in Australia and in Japan to do research for his thesis. He was also staying as her guest.

We chatted it up and sat down for dinner. I love home cooked meals, especially when they involve kimchi. I missed that beautiful, spicy, red crunch attacking my tastebuds a lot. Despite my appetite for adventure, the familiar was also very welcomed.

I was talking to the teenage daughter, HaeJung, about school in Japan. She has a very interesting education, actually. Raised in New York, we've known each other since we were little. She spent her early, formative years speaking English in the New York public school system and speaking Korean at home. A few years back, her mom got a job teaching at Kansai University at they all moved to Japan. HaeJung didn't speak a word of Japanese when they got there. I think that's so brave - I can't imagine how much angst I'd have, being a teenager in a country where I couldn't speak the language. I would break so many things in the house. She's now fluent in English, Korean and Japanese, playing the saxaphone and trying to find her place in the thick bureaucracy of Japanese high school. So neat.

The next morning, Owen took it upon himself to take me around the Osaka area, introducing me to the local culture and history. We went out to Osaka Castle first which was pretty impressive, what with its giant moat and massive stone walls and gold ornamentation. Owen explained how the castle was deeply imbued in Korean-Japanese history, which was the rough of his thesis. Inside the castle was a museum where I was further able to learn about emperor Meiji, the Summer Wars and Japan's first invasion of the Korean peninsula.

It was really pretty interesting, though by the end of the eight story history lesson, I was ready for some good old brain rot. After a short snack break where I was introduced to the magic of Takoyaki (super hot balls of fried dough filled with squid and topped with saucy goodness ummmm), we headed to the aquarium. Owen also happens to be an avid diver and snorkeler with a really good vocabulary when it comes to marine life! So I got to hear some really cool stories to relate to all the different species of fish and underwater mammals I saw swimming behind the thick wall of acrylic glass. The manta rays hypnotized me. We also got to see whale sharks feeding. They look like hoover vacuums, it's really insane.

After that, we met up with the Professor and her Professor friend at the train station to get dinner. I was introduced to a dish called Okonomiyaki. According to Wikipedia, it is a Japanese savory pancake whose name literally translates to "what you like cooked". I can't really write this part of the entry without producing a lot of drool. Stop talking about food, Shannon. I'm kind of hungry.