A few weeks ago, Pippi and I visited Japan while I was on my one week summer vacation. It was a blast. We went to the southernmost island, called Kyushu, and traveled all over the northern half. Our route: from Fukuoka to Nagasaki to Kumumoto and then onto a tiny onsen town called Yufuin. Every kind of Japanese food we could think of we ate, and for entertainment we visited museums, tall ships, castles and volcanoes (to name a few). We traveled by train, bus, ferry, trolley, bike and foot and got by on four Japanese words: Konichiwa (hello), Arigato Gozimas (thank you very much), Ohio Gozimas (good day to you) and Hai (yes). It was a most excellent adventure, but rather than boring you all with the excruciating details (for instance- our 2 hour walk to a hotel when we got off the bus at the wrong stop), I will save that for stories I tell at home and will instead regale you with amusing comparisons of Korea (at least the Seoul area I am used to) and Japan (Kyushu specific- I cannot comment on Tokyo).
Warning to the reader- this post is rated PG-13 due to some more mature topics. If you might be offended by these, please skip Love Motels.
Number One: Food
Well duh, you might be thinking. Korean people eat barbeque and kimchee, Japanese people eat sushi and tempura (among other things). But what I found fascinating as I wandered around Japan and sampled everything I could think of is that there is almost no spicy food in Japan. While in Korea I can only find food that is spicy and or sweet, the vast majority of Japanese food strongly tastes of sesame seed oil, ginger or soy sauce. A Korean ramyeon will make my eyes tear up and my nose run, but its Japanese cousin, the better known ramen, hasn’t even a hint of spice, unless you count the optional ginger sprinkled on top. Wasabi has a bite, yes, but it can’t even begin to compete in spiciness with the ubiquitous red pepper of Japan’s western neighbor.
Number Two: Expense
I’ve heard it before and I will repeat it for anyone who will listen. Japan is EXPENSIVE. Korea isn’t particularly cheap or anything but there are places to stay for 10 dollars a night and plenty of nice meals for under 5 dollars. Not so with Japan. And the yen is doing disgustingly well, particularly compared to the won. Japanese trips will bite you in the pocketbook.
Number Three: Love Motels
An interesting phenomenon exists in Korea. Children are expected to live with their parents until they are married and living alone is very frowned upon. This poses a problem for young Korean couples who feel a little frisky in the dating stage, particularly ones that are in their 20s. Rather than hiding in bushes like their teenage counterparts in the US (Korea, with its incredibly dense population, does have a dearth of sneaking away spots, so it would be hard for them to find any bushes anyway), a highly successful business of providing rooms has sprung up on practically every city street in Korea. The love motel is as common in Korea as Starbucks is in America, you cannot get very far without seeing a bright neon sign announcing the motel and garage entrances with the top half obscured by cords (to keep people from being able to see the drivers of the cars that go into the motels). They are frequented by amorous young couples, Korean men with their prostitutes, traveling foreigners and cheating couples. Love motels range from classy to creepy and are a wonderfully cheap option for a pair of travelers with no toothbrushes (for some reason every love motel provides a toothbrush to each of its guests). Even if you do have a toothbrush, love motels are highly convenient. My school put me up in one for my first four nights in Korea.
In Japan, I was curious to see if the love motel had found a similar niche in the landscape and society. I did find love motels, but it was quite a different experience. Japanese love motels are incredibly sketchy. They involve separate entrances and exits and rather than a front desk, they instead have a display of the available rooms, each with a picture that shows the theme of the room. If it’s lit up, it’s available. If not, well… don’t go in. I don’t expect they provide toothbrushes either. Pippi and I definitely decided that love motels in Japan were not friendly places for the low budget traveler, so I never will know exactly how they worked, but I don’t regret skipping the love motel and staying at a business hotel instead.
Number Four: Smell
No offense Korea, but you smell. You do. Face it. Rotting bags of kimchee on the street outside of restaurants lend a distinct odor to Korea that in the summer is simply too overwhelming to be ignored. And even though most Koreans don’t have terrible b.o. and thus deodorant is a scarce commodity, when you’re crammed onto the subway up to your eyeballs in people, the few that do need deodorant become painfully obvious.
Japan, on the other hand, seems to have a countrywide case of hygienic OCD. There is no smell, which is quite a relief, but in return you get a bidet unit on every private and nearly every public toilet, as well as silly little river sound makers to mask the noises of your toilet usage. For a few days after I returned from Japan, the bathroom sounded exceptionally quiet and I almost missed the gurgling brook accompaniment.
Number Five: English speaking ability
In Korea I have been somewhat spoiled. English is taught at public school now; most Koreans know a bit of English and can understand some of my most basic requests. Their accents are atrocious and they rarely can comprehend mine, which often leads to me being forced to speak Konglish (adding an uh or ee noise on the end of any word that ends with a hard consonant), but at least nearly everyone can say hello, English teacher, and where are you from (the vast majority of my conversations with random Koreans include those three phrases).
In Japan, very few people speak English. The average person on the street will not recognize anything more than Hello, and one is quickly reduced to elaborate and inaccurate sign language with hotel staff, waiters and bus drivers. Pippi and I went into one restaurant in Yufuin where the menu had no pictures, and since neither of us could read kanji and the waiter could speak absolutely no English, we were left looking quizzically around while the waiter shuffled his feet awkwardly in the kitchen. We were saved from starvation when our only fellow diner received her meal of tempura, which we pointed at frantically and held up two fingers, begging in English and repeating the word "tempura" like a mantra.
Fortunately, most major train stations have incredibly helpful information staff who assure you they can only speak a little English and then answer your complicated questions with clear accents and an excellent grasp of grammar. There appears to be no in between. So definitely learn the word for bathroom if you plan on going to Japan some time soon.
Obviously there was more- from differing fashion and hairstyles to completely different geography (the mini mountains of Korea are much different than the sharp volcanic peaks on the Japanese islands). There were different looking temples and castles, and all the Hyundais and Kias of Korea got traded for Hondas and Toyotas in Japan (that drove on the wrong side of the road). There were similarities too- the convenience stores had the same names and foods, many of the same brands existed in both countries and everyone had an unhealthy obsession with Hello Kitty (including Pippi). It was fun, and fascinating. And now I have two more stamps in my passport to show that I am quite the world traveler indeed.
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