DAY 7: ARRIVAL IN JAPAN!

yay. so this is the day we arrive in japan! woohoo :D i'm with nori right now at his university using his physics lab's wifi to write this. so much to write, so little time. anyhow, here goesss ...

yo. so basically we left korea in the early morning ... got up at like 6am or something to catch our flight over and arrived in japan at narita airport sometime in the early afternoon. me, ron, and david shared a flight and billy and amy shared a different one. we met up at the airport mcdonald's and then took a bus from the airport to tokyo, and then the rail/subway to ichigaya station ... near nori's place. was raining ... like always ... haha. not everything went as smoothly as we had hoped or planned, but we made it. by the time we met up with nori, at the station, it was like 6pm ... 12 hours since departure.

but who cares? WE MADE IT! we were in motherfucking japan!!! haha. we took the long uphill walk (in the rain) to nori's place to drop off our stuff and then went out in search of japanese food with NORI! motherfucking NORI! dannng, too hype lol. he took us to this crazy ass place where we could actually fish for our own food. like they literally gave us all fishing rods and bait INSIDE the restaurant, and we went out to try and hook our own sushi. depending on what you caught, it was a different price.

david and billy ended up being the bread ... i mean, fish-winners of the night. once you caught the fish, they took it to the back and prepared it into sushi for us to eat ...

forsure one of the more fun dining experiences i've had. japan is looking up. 

OUT OF ORDER

sorry if some posts are out of order. trying desperately right now to catch up with my blog postings. fell way behind during the week we literally had no internet access ... hopefully i can get back on track and up to date sooner rather than later lol. there is just SOO much ... in the meantime, bear with me pleaseeeee :P

KYOTO "THE DARK ESCAPE" 2013

footage from lucio's go-pro. day 12 in kyoto. him and ron are playing a scary 3d first person shooting game. shit was scary. yeaaaaaah ... hahaha

DAY 6: INSADONG

our last day in korea was spent at the historic city of insadong. first thing on the menu for breakfast: KOREAN BBQ! ... oh the realness lol. meat in korea is hella expensive. no wonder kbbq in california is so popular. for one small tiny ribeye, it was like 40 bucks! ... the price of two all-you-can-eat full course menus at manna. daymmmm.

samgyup sal was a little cheaper ... but still pretty pricy. we each had like a couple bites of meat and the bill still came out to over 25 bucks per person. aside from the ribeye and pork, we got some raw marinated meat and a some denjangchigae. wow, culture shock for sure.

then it was exploration time. we went in search of some palaces and temples to wander ... unfortunately a lot of them were closed. we did a bit of sight seeing and shopping though in the area, so our time wasn't a complete waste. we also got to try some traditionally made makkoli, yakju, and soju. we spent just a lot of time walking around and looking at stuff ...

was pretty fun. got to see a lot of interesting structures and scenery. here's a cool panorama of one of the sites we visited. my first iphone panorama! haha

here's a funny photo i caught of my ron, amy, and david ... drama much? 

just kidding. was a moderately successful escapade. although we didn't quite get to see everything we wanted or expected to, we had a good time looking around the city and checking out small shops, bakeries, and such ... some of the more historic viewpoints were really nice.

before we knew it, we had to start heading home to pack up and get ready for our flight to tokyo the next morning ... 

stopped off at the local lotte mart next to seoul station to pick up some food and drink. got some watermelon, chips, and mochi. japan here we come!

LAST DAYS IN KOREA

(wrote this up day 7 on the bus to tokyo)

know i've been lagging with the blog posts. it's just hard to find time to just sit, think, and type. we've been jam packing our days to make the most of our short time here abroad. i barely even have time to sleep haha. i'm actually on the bus right now on the way from incheon airport to tokyo - day seven … so, for whoever is counting, i'm officially two days behind. but don't worry, i remember everything. so here goes - a short (maybe kind of long-ish) recap of our last two days in korea! 

DAY 5:

our first day without our korean guide, aka billy. we decided to take a day off from sight seeing to shop at dongdaemun, the city for thrifty buyers and rude ass sellers lol.  so, we started the morning with a nice refreshing visit to the local atm machine … then it was off to dongdaemun!

place wasn't very classy. was sort of set up like a normal american mall, but there we way more floors and waaay more sellers. each vendor was either the owner or a direct representative of the brand ... so haggling was the name of the game. we weren't korean though, so it wasn't easy. amy and ron were pretty much the only people to get anything. lots of escalator time up and down though.

a lot of dongdaemun was closed on monday during the day (when we went) so we decided to go again some other time and hightail it back to our first home - hongdae! we just ate, shopped, and walked around our favorite city haha. here are some pics of ron's face:

sums of the day pretty good lol. found batman smoothie at the korean jamba juice. 

met up with billy later in the evening to go korean karaoke ... and of course, eat and drink. i don't really karaoke much, but i have to say ... definitely the best singing sesh i have EVER had haha. street food we ate after was pretty bomb too. 

sooo behind with my bloggin right now, so i'm just throwing up pics lol. wheee!