Osaka, Japan

So we went to Japan back in March to get our visas sorted out and it was awesome! We were in Osaka for about two days and we spent most of our time wandering around downtown. The map we were given for the Korean consulate was not helpful at all so we had some trouble finding the place. Eventually we found it and when we were done there we had the rest of the day to find our hostel - The Osaka House. It took us a while because of the whole bad map situation, but we managed to find our way there too.

The Osaka House was cool, but all it consisted of was a floor, a TV (with only Japanese channels), and some mats to sleep on. See the pics for more details. Japanese people (in Osaka anyways) are crazy stylish. Everyone looked like they spent at least 3 hours on their hair before going out. I wish I got some pictures to prove my point… you’ll just have to take my word for it. There were also an insane amount of bicyclists riding around and they all acted like we were in their way, while we were walking on the sidewalk. We came very close to being in some head on collisions, and causing some too, lol.

The majority of our time the 2nd day was spent in an outdoor (but covered) mall type place because it was raining. It had a tonne of Pachinko parlours (like Plinko on The Price is Right - the Japanese go crazy for it), lots of McDonald's and Starbucks, and other typical mall stores. For lunch, we went to a traditional sushi restaurant. It was cool. We sat at the ‘bar’ and watched the chefs do their thing and serve us some of the best sushi I've every had. All in all we had an awesome time. Hopefully we can get back to Japan again someday.

Korean update #1

Well, we've been here almost three months and a whole heck of a lot has happened. I'm not going to write about everything in this post, just a little update with some pics of my flat and my new city. I'm living in place called Gyoha. It's about 1-1.5 hours north of Seoul (not 40 mins like our recruiter told us...) and there's not a whole lot going on here. There's a ton of restaurants, a gym, badminton/basketball courts, some noraebangs (literally translated into "song room", personal karaoke like in Lost in Translation - more on those in a later post!) and not much else. Here's some pics.

a restaurant across the street

inside our flat

from the outside (we're on the 2nd floor)

the main drag in Gyoha

My First Post

Well, here it is. The long awaited, eagerly anticipated and ever elusive blog to chronicle the goings on in my life. I never thought I'd have enough to say to the world to have one (lets be honest, I probably don't) but hey, I'm living on the other side of the world at the moment and if that's not reason enough to justify my own blog, I don't know what is.

So, without further ado, let's start the insanity...