Travel Log: 31 days of Japan and Korea in 31 pictures

So yeah, I was in Japan and Korea for a full month combined.

This was the longest and most exciting vacation of my life by far. I've never been this far from home – both in a geographic and in a cultural sense. I'm really happy that I was able to make this experience with 3 of my friends.

In that one month, we stayed at 12 different accommodations and saw everything from mega-cities to rainforests. Since this makes for a lot of material to talk about, I have opted for a more constrained format: one picture for every day that we spent, each hopefully contributing a bite-sized piece of a full impression.

That's the idea, anyway. At the very least, you'll be able to look at some cool photos!

Here We Go

15/4

I arrived tired and exhausted in Osaka and stumbled my way from the airport to our hotel. This is the immediate view you're greeted with when you exit Juso station at night.

16/4

A view of popular tourist/nightlife quarter Dotonbori. Blinding neon signs everywhere, and completely overrun. But definitely fun to take in the atmosphere for a night.

17/4

First night in Kyoto. Instead of eating out, we went to get takeout from "Mister Gyoza" near our accommodation. They were delicious.

18/4

That day we spent most of our time in Uji, a small and quiet part of Kyoto known for its UNESCO heritage sites and tea. This particular temple is also on the ¥10 coin.

19/4

Our first time properly having sushi in Japan. This was at a joint near our accommodation (far from the crowded city centre). In advance, we had read a remarkable number of Google reviews that all mentioned that the place is run by two brothers, one nice and talkative, the other reserved and rude. This piece of local sushi lore was really funny to us and we wanted to confirm it. Sure enough: two chefs were working there, and one of them kept striking up conversation despite a heavy language barrier while the other barely said anything except to reprimand his colleague for not focusing on his work. Whether they were brothers or not I can't say. The sushi was the best I've ever had, though.

20/4

Day trip to Nara, known for its historic temples and large population of deer. And yup, there sure were a lot of deer everywhere. And deer poop. It was great.

21/4

That day we left Kyoto for Hakone, a popular region near Mount Fuji. We arrived some time in the afternoon and didn't really know what to do for the rest of the day, so we decided on a whim to take a bus to Gotemba, a city a bit further away with a good view of the mountain. Well, we didn't go to the city exactly, but to a huge complex of luxury brand stores outside of the city. This made for a bizarre contrast of hyper-consumerism and beautiful scenery, which you can see in this picture. The rest of my time there was spent in an onsen, watching the sun set behind Fuji-san.

22/4

Sulfur mines on volcano Owakudani. Naturally, our ascent was accompanied by a persistent smell of eggs. We also tried Owakudani black eggs, which are cooked in the sulfur and consequently turn black on the outside. Allegedly they give you 6 extra years of life. Idk, they just tasted like eggs to me.

23/4

First night out in Tokyo. We went to an obscure show with 6 different bands at the "WALL" in Hatsudai. Our little group constituted like a third of the entire audience, if you discount the people who were there to play on stage themselves. This was delightfully DIY and punk, I loved it. The fella in the picture was making techno on his effect pad while, at the same time, playing a didgeridoo. Shit went hard.

24/4

I prefer not to elaborate on this experience.

25/4

Shibuya on a Saturday night. The entire area was like that, no escape from the crowd. It was so full I felt the urge to flee, so I ditched my friends and hopped on a train to somewhere else.

26/4

That day in Ueno park the entire Cambodian diaspora of Tokyo had met to celebrate their culture. We stumbled across this event by pure chance. We watched people dance and I had some Cambodian food.

27/4

A view from Tokyo Sky Tree at night. The size of Tokyo is truly baffling. Even at 450m above ground, that city stretches beyond the horizon in every cardinal direction.

28/4

A big park in Shinjuku, a little oasis in the chaos. We spent almost the entire day here, just relaxing in the sun.

29/4

Second concert in Tokyo, this time at the Crocodile bar in Harajuku. Masataka Nakano (guitar) assembled a band to pay tribute to Japanese jazz musician Naoya Matsuoka. This was some of the best live jazz I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. Afterwards, multiple members of the band came up to us and thanked us for being there (apparently we were the only strangers in the small audience). A perfect evening.

30/4

"Gyozas that would impress even chairman Mao" or something along those lines is written on that sign. We went to this restaurant on our first evening in Yokohama mainly because we thought it would be funny. An expressionless waiter ushered us to a table, put a menu on the table, said "you will get number 1, 2, 3 and 3 beers" and left again, leaving us rather confused. Did he just order for us? As it turned out, he did. He came back with 3 beers and the 3 dishes he picked. The fact that this happened in a grimey, communist-themed Chinese restaurant was the icing on the cake. I think that evening was the hardest I laughed on the entire trip. We also "talked" with a group of very drunk Japanese people (coworkers?) who actually ended up giving us a pretty good recommendation for a Ramen place in Kagoshima.

01/5

Our second day in Yokohama we went to Kamakura, a place famous for temples and beaches. It was completely pissing down for the first half of the day while we were walking through the quiet northern parts looking at temples. Once we got closer to the center though, the weather cleared up and we strolled through the lively parts of town until we reached the beach. It was very windy and not quite warm enough to jump into the water, but nice to hang out on a sand beach nonetheless.

02/5

Before leaving Yokohama for a long train ride to Kagoshima, we spent some time in the (free entry) pier-side amusement park. The view here is from a ferris wheel. Between the tall buildings, we caught our last glimpse of Mt. Fuji.

03/5

Off the coast of Kagoshima you can probably make out an island with a kind of mountain on it. That mountain is actually 2 volcanos, one of which is among the most active in the world with an eruption almost every 3 days (incidentally, not while we were present). This makes for some very bizarre problems in city planning. For example, there are thousands of ash disposal points for residents. Oh yeah, and the other thing about Kagoshima is that it rained. A lot.

04/5

Public transport in Kagoshima is not really en par with many of the other cities in Japan. There are 2 streetcar lines that look cute but aren't very efficient. At the more popular stations, you have to wait in a line to get on the next tram, but often won't make it because the vehicles are to small to take on everybody. Fortunately they had recently added support for paying directly with a credit card instead of forcing us to pay the exact amount in cash when getting off (the only other option as a visitor).

05/5

View of Miyanoura, the biggest town on Yakushima, a fairly remote island south of Kagoshima. We had spent that day on a hike where we'd met two foreign English teachers living in Japan spending their national holidays here. We went out to eat with them and tried the local specialty, whole fried flying fish.

06/5

I have hundreds of photos from our hikes on Yakushima, but this probably shows one of the craziest looking trees I saw. Yakushima's forests are famous for being full of cedar trees that are thousands of years old, causing some of them to become really big. The hiking paths were absolutely breathtaking, nature unlike anything I've ever seen before. The path we took that particular day was through the Shiratani Unsuikyo Gorge, famous for the moss-covered forest that inspired the setting of Princess Mononoke.

07/5

Our last night in Japan was spent in Fukuoka (where our ferry to Korea would leave the next day). A popular tourist attraction are these food stalls next to Naka river. They were... overpriced and underwhelming. Two dozen stands at most, the most popular ones requiring you to wait in line for a long time. After trying some skewers here we went to eat somewhere else in the area instead, and finished the evening just hanging out in the mild summer air with some drinks.

08/5

The first view of Busan as we arrived by ferry. The trip took a bit more than 6 hours and was very relaxed (despite a lot of airport-like ceremony up front).

09/5

We went to this Busan café because my cousin showed me a TikTok that made it sound so insane we had to see it for ourselves. It did not disappoint. The thing is basically a collaborative art project with tons of weird decoration and objects as well as drawings and photos you can freely contribute to. Plus there's a garden with ducks you can feed.

10/5

That day we met up with some Korean friends to drive further to the south west where we'd rented an AirBnB for a few nights. This was on our way there, watching the sun set over the nearby coastal town Tongyeong from a park on a hill.

11/5

This was a small "hiking" (more like casual strolling, really) trail near Tongyeong that you could reach via cable car. We walked around on the mountain marvelling at the stunning assortment of little islands just off the coast.

12/5

Most of this day was spent in a car on our way to Seoul, where one of our Korean friends had agreed to take us. This photo was taken at a highway rest stop. For some reason they had a tank and a cat that kinda looked like that tank.

13/5

Seoul was almost unbearably hot, so we sought refuge in the bit of greenery that we could find. This is the Cheonggyecheon path right through the middle of the city with a small canal and a bunch of green stuff. I really liked the contrast between the massive glass and concrete buildings towering over you on the left and right and the calm, green scenery in the middle.

14/5

Our last day in Seoul, and fittingly the spiciest food we had on the entire trip. These are Jokbal, spicy pig trotters, which we really only tried because Paul recommended it to me. Surprisingly tasty, even though the collagen-heavy texture is something I would have to get used to. This picture is also a great example of how many sides you would get to almost every meal in Korea. Pretty cool.

15/5

And here we are on our way back to Germany again. I think this picture was taken as we were landing for a transfer in Taipei.