Adventures in Japan

Well we made it back, safely and somewhat sanely. Had a very good time, Japan is a wonderful place. So on with the story.

We left Taegu Thursday night, so we could catch the hydrofoil ferry out of Pusan. We had booked the cheapest rooms we could find since we were only going to be there long enough to sleep. Will not do that again, I highly expected to wake up in a tub full of ice missing my kidneys. We made it through the night and proceeded to the ferry. The hydrofoil is the way to go, a very smooth ride. The only snag getting out of Korea, was the folks at the immigration office have no clue what they are doing. I almost was detained because the woman behind the counter did not know what a multiple entry visa was. After some discussion and asking to see a supervisor we were on our way.

Arriving in Japan, we learned our second lesson (the first being Korean immigration is staffed by idiots, this will be shown again later)...Have a hotel booked in advance. It is very hard to get though Japanese immigration if you don't have a hotel booked, it took us about 45 minutes longer that it should have. After getting into Fukuoka, we found it to be a beautiful city. I found the people to be polite, considerate, and generally very happy. I highly recommend vacationing here to anyone. We only had one night in Japan, so we did not see a tenth of what we wanted to.

The trip back on the hydrofoil was a blast, the weather had turned bad so the sea was quite rough. Bobbing and weaving like a roller coaster, the hydrofoil impressed me with the speed it took the waves. Returning to Korea, we ran into the next big problem.

One of our intrepid explorers, was detained at immigration. The man at this counter told him that his visa was expired, even though it clearly stated on the visa that it was good. After about an hour of waiting for him to be released, he finally was let into the country. They had confiscated his residency card, and revoked his visa, he now has 28 days to get new ones or he will be deported. With the exception of Korean immigration, the trip was a great time. I will be going back there sometime.

Here are a few of the shots I took there. I will post more as I finish processing them. Click on a pic to see it bigger.