{"id":547,"date":"2011-07-04T08:48:25","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T13:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/?p=547"},"modified":"2011-07-04T08:48:25","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T13:48:25","slug":"short-trip-to-korea-pt-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/archives\/547","title":{"rendered":"Short trip to Korea, pt. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

And by short, I mean short<\/em>. I’ve been in in Kumamoto, Japan on an extended business trip for most of the summer (since mid-May, in fact), working on a project here. In fact the trip is so long that I had a problem: one week before I left my wife pointed out to me that my scheduled stay was about 95 days, and I can only stay in Japan 90 days without a visa. Unfortunately the travel office for my company didn’t realize it either: I guess they generally deal with people going to Japan for a week or two, or a year or two, but not around 3 months.<\/p>\n

It was too late to apply for a visa, so the alternative plan was for me to briefly leave Japan for a day or two while I was there, and when I get back my 90 days should reset. So I ended up with a ticket to go to Seoul, South Korea on July 1st and then fly back to Japan on July 2nd. I asked some Korean friends of mine for suggestions as to what I should do while I’m in Seoul for a whopping 24 hours. So here was how my trip began:<\/p>\n

June 1st: 10:30 am<\/strong>: Leave from Fukuoaka airport on Korean airlines flight. The stewardesses (or flight attendants, if you insist on PC), were without exception, young, friendly, and very attractive. I reminded me a bit of Singapore airlines, although I don’t think anything comes close to those dresses the Singapore airlines stewardesses wear. All the Korea Air stewardesses had very good English, and impeccable Japanese that was so good I had trouble distinguishing it from native fluency.<\/p>\n

June 1st: 11:30 am<\/strong>: (Just a 1 hour flight, and they still served a meal and drinks!) Arrive at Incheon airport. No problems with customs and immigration, I just have the clothes on my back and a backpack with a change of clothes. As soon as I leave customs and enter the public area of the airport, I must have had an unmistakable ‘wide-eyed lost foreigner’ look, because I’m immediately accosted by an older unkempt man with broken English asking if I need help getting a bus or taxi. It was tempting, since I was there as part of a business trip I could probably expense it, but I wanted to do it the hard way.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So I refused his help and went to the information desk, where the cheerful Korean young woman there was fluent in English and Japanese, so I was set. She gave me a map of the Seoul subway system (maybe only 30% as crazy as the Tokyo subway) and gave me general directions to my first destination: the Yongsan Electronics market.<\/p>\n

So far things seemed pretty similar to Japan, except for the small fact that I couldn’t understand what half of the people were saying (the other half were Japanese, there were a lot of Japanese at the airport), and I couldn’t read all the hangul<\/em> that was everywhere. However I got a big shock when I got my tickets for the express train to Seoul: it was super-cheap! The express train to Seoul station from the airport takes about an hour, and it cost 4300 won, or about $4.30. Compare that to the equivalent Narita Express from Narita Airport to Tokyo station, which takes about the same amount of time: it costs 2940 yen, or $37! I had heard that South Korea was really inexpensive compared to Japan, but I had no idea it would be that huge of a difference.<\/p>\n

There was also this weird thing with the train system I never figured out: when you buy a train ticket, instead of getting an actual ticket, you get a plastic card that’s essentially like a credit card: made of plastic, same size, and it has a RFID chip on it. When you enter the station you place the card on the top of the reader, and then the turnstile unlocks for you. So at Incheon airport I bought a ticket to take me to Yongsan station from Incheon airport, which had on change of lines at Seoul station. So I ride all the way to Seoul station, get off, and start following the signs for ‘other lines’. However they take me out<\/em> of the station so I have to flash my card again and go through the turnstiles. I thought, ‘the card has a record of how much money I put into it, and where my final destination is, so it shouldn’t be a problem.’ Well, I continued to follow the mass of people to the other lines, and when I got to the turnstiles there I flashed my card again. and a red light. So I was wrong. Exiting through the turnstile zeroed out my card. So how was I supposed to get to the other lines without exiting the turnstiles? I had the same problem the next day going back to the airport, and I never did figure it out. Well, at least the tickets are cheap so it wasn’t a huge loss. If the same thing had happened with a $40 ticket I would have been really ticked off.<\/beep><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And by short, I mean short. I’ve been in in Kumamoto, Japan on an extended business trip for most of the summer (since mid-May, in fact), working on a project here. In fact the trip is so long that I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}