Home Again

I know this post is waaaaaay overdue, so overdue in fact that I considered not even writing it.
I apologize, but better late than never I suppose.

In case you haven't heard yet, I am no longer in Japan and have returned to my home on Lopez Island.

I'll quickly fill you in on all the important things that happened after my last post.

While in Korea I gathered more documents to show the immigration officers before trying to re-enter a second time.

As you can probably guess, I was turned down this time as well.

They told me they could not let me in because I was planning on doing the same thing as before.

It soon became apparent that my plans to do WWOOF were a problem.

The immigration officials thought the work I planned to do violated the tourist visa even though it's all volunteer work.

I had taken an earlier boat this time, so I was able to catch a ride back to Busan instead of staying in the port again.

Once back in Busan, I spent a few days communicating with the language school.

They did a lot to try and help get me back in, and even spoke with immigration officials several times.

I purchased a ticket back to Fukuoka, but ended up canceling it.

It was a hard decision to make.

But considering what had happened the past two times, it seemed unlikely that they would let me in this time.

Also, I had encountered some problems with Korean immigration officials, (namely one particular official) after being sent back the second time, so I didn't want to risk anything happening if I was sent back again.

Since I already had reserved 2 plane tickets for the return trip (Fukuoka-Narita, Narita-Seattle) it was cheaper to change the date of the ticket rather than to buy one from Busan to Seattle.

So I took a plane from Busan to Fukuoka on what I hoped was a connecting flight, but turned out not to be.

When I arrived in Fukuoka I was questioned again by immigration, but I managed to convince them that all I wanted to do was get a plane back home.

2 more plane rides and approximately 14 hours later I landed in SEATAC on the 10th of February.

So now I'm home, and have been for a while (again, sorry for the overdue post.)

My plans for now are to keep studying Japanese and working until the end of summer and start university in the fall.
I know I'll be going back to Japan in the future, probably through an exchange program with my university.
Also, I'm planning on taking a trip to Europe sometime this year or next year to visit some of my friends from the language school.
Until then, I'm not sure what I'll do with this blog.
I may post random things about Japan/Japanese as I feel compelled.
Or now that I have more time, I may post more about things that happened during my trip.
As always, leave a comment if you have any questions etc.
じゃまた。

Hello again everyone.
It certainly has been an eventful last couple of days, so I'll do my best to fill you in.
On the 24th of January I left Fukuoka to go to Busan, South Korea.
I made this trip to renew my 3 month tourist visa, which expires on the 29th.
The easiest, and sometimes the only, way to get it renewed is to go to another country and re-enter.
But before I tell you how the re-entry process went, I'll let you know about my short stay in Busan.
I left Hakata Port at 1:45pm aboard the JR Beetle Jet Ferry.


The trip took about 3 hours, and it was a fairly bumpy ride.
I did get a bit seasick on the way over but I managed to not lose my lunch.

Arriving at Busan

After arriving I took a taxi to the hotel.
Luckily the exchange rate to Korean Won is very good.
The taxi cost about 8,000 won which is just about 6 dollars US.
Here's a view from the hotel room I stayed in that night.

And the same view during the day.

The next morning I woke up at about 9 o'clock and had some of the hotel's complimentary do-it-yourself breakfast of fried eggs, toast and orange juice.
Afterwards I decided to explore a bit by following one of the main roads for a while.


On the way, I found a subway station with a map showing popular attractions.
So I took a subway to Busan Cultural Center and UN Memorial Cemetery.



I didn't end up entering the UN Memorial cemetery (pictured above), but instead walked to a nearby sculpture park.



This is the entrance to Busan Museum.
I would have gone in, but it didn't look like it was open that day.

After my little trip around the city, I felt a bit guilty that I hadn't yet tried any real Korean food yet.
So I talked to the hotel staff, and they ordered some food from a local restaurant and it was delivered to the hotel.
This whole meal of soup, kimchi, strips of fried egg and a sushi-like roll with vegetables inside cost about $2.50 US.

So the next day (the 26th) I checked out of my hotel, got a taxi to Busan Port and set off on my 3 hour voyage back to Japan.
I arrived in Hakata Port about 5:45 PM, and was thinking about getting some sushi before I heading back to the dorm.

I walked up to the immigration counter, and showed the man my passport, immigration card and plane ticket.

Now, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but he either saw I had written "3 Months" in the 'Intended length of Stay' box on my immigration card or he saw the date on my returning plane ticket was for the end of May.
Either way, I heard him say under his breath in Japanese something about "too long".
I was then asked to sit and wait while passengers from another boat that had just arrived went through immigration.
Next they asked me to show them what was in my bag and they patted me down.
Then I was interviewed by an immigration officer with an interpreter on speakerphone.
The officer asked me a bunch of questions regarding what I have been doing and what I plan to do in Japan.
He asked me if I had a university ID card.
I explained to him that I have been accepted to and am planning on attending Willamette University later this year, but because I haven't actually started taking classes, I do not have a student ID card. He found it quite funny that I don't know what I'm majoring in yet.
Because in Japan, the process of applying for university is quite different, he didn't seem to understand, or probably believe, much of what I was saying.
When I told him I went to a Japanese language school he asked if I had any textbooks so I showed them to him.
He took a look at my first textbook (which I finished). The cover is taken off and there are doodles on the front, he started flipping through the pages and said "This looks new, I can seem to find which pages you've studied."
Whenever he got to one where I had written down vocab or something, he would quickly flip past it.
I tried to show him these pages he just didn't seem to care.
I had a letter of guarantee from the founder of the Genki JACS (the language school), but that didn't seem to be enough for the officer.
He also asked me some quiz-like questions that weren't very fair in my opinion.
For example, when I told him about WWOOF (which he seemed suspicious of) he asked me: "You say you're interested in organic farming. Well, there is a man in Japan that is famous for being an organic farmer, do you know who he is?"
The whole process was quite frustrating.

When it was over he told me that I was being denied entry and that I could either go back to Korea or try and appeal.
I wanted to contact Genki JACS and ask them what they thought I should do, but they would not allow me to use their phones
Also my cellphone was dead and I couldn't use an outlet because apparently would be like "stealing" from them.
I tried to get more information from the officer about how the appeal process works, but he didn't seem to know much about it, and he wasn't willing to get anyone else to explain it to me.
So since I didn't know anything about how the appeals work, and there seemed to be a pretty good chance that I would not be able to contact anyone before I had to appeal, I decided to go back to Korea and try and re-enter again later.
So after it was finally over, I was in the custody of the JR Beetle Company.
Since there were no more boats going back to Busan that night, I "slept" in this room.



The JR Beetle company was nice enough to buy me a Bento (japanese boxed lunch) and a bottle of water.




There were various messages written on the walls of the room in Korean and Japanese.
One simply said: "日本人はいらだちだ", "Japanese people are irritating."


I wasn't sure what this stuff on the wall was, but I didn't touch it.


After taking the 3 hour voyage once more, I arrived in Busan at about 11:00am Tuesday morning.
I had to pay the JR Beetle company for the ticket back and for the 2 security guards that apparently had to stand outside the door all night.
The total cost was about 900,000 Won. Since the ATM at the port would not let me withdraw that much, I was driven by a JR Beetle employee to a bank ATM nearby.
In case you're curious, here's what about 1,000,000 Won looks like.

Now I'm back in Busan, safe and sound.
My plan over the next few days is to gather more documentation showing what I'm planning to do in Japan, and try and re-enter the country by next week.
And, of course I'll be doing some sightseeing around Busan.
I'll try and keep you posted on what I'm doing here.
As always, leave a comment if you have any questions or anything.
じゃまた。

Fish Tales

Hello again everyone,
I'd first like to let everyone know that I changed the settings on the comment page.
You no longer need to have a blogger account or anything to leave a comment.
Just type in the box and click 'post', but be sure to leave your name so I know who you are.

Alright,
So I have two fish related things to tell you about today.
Last week I went out with a group of about ten students for some Japanese food.
But this wasn't just your typical Japanese restaurant.
This place let you fish for you own meal.
As you can see from the first picture, the place was designed to look like two large boats.
The fish swim around in the large tank that surrounds the boats.


Although it would be possible to fish over the edge of the "boats" from the tables, it might be a bit difficult, not to mention dangerous, to get a flapping fish from your rod into the net without unintentionally splashing or hurting someone.
So the restaurant had a designated fishing area to fish from.
Along with a few small tanks filled with eels and other small fish that would probably be impossible to catch otherwise.

It didn't take long for our group to get a few fish, and just minutes later, they were cut up into sashimi and served.

As you can see this fish was displayed along with the meat.
I guess you know it's fresh when the tail is still twitching slightly when it's served.
Here's a squid we caught as well.

Just this last Tuesday, I got another chance to have a unique fish-related experience.
I went out with a few friends to a fugu restaurant.
Fugu is pufferfish. It's kind of a famous dish in Japan mainly because the fish itself contains a deadly neurotoxin.
If the fish is prepared incorrectly, and you ingest some of the toxin, it can result in paralysis followed by death.
I guess it's lethality must be what makes it so expensive.
We just ordered a small plate of fugu.

The fugu was sliced quite thin, probably for good reason.

Here's some sashimi we ordered as well for comparison.
The orange stuff on top of the cucumbers is sea urchin.

Overall I thought the fugu tasted pretty good, but there wasn't really much of it to taste.
But it guess I can say it's the most dangerous thing I've ever eaten.
Right after we ate, a few of us thought we might be feeling a bit dizzy, but I'm pretty sure it was just in our heads.
Wikipedia says that most deaths occur within 4-24 hours after consuming it, so I should be fine...
Below some Sake my friend ordered that came with a fugu fin in it.


I will post some more within the next couple days and let you know how things are going.
But for now feel free to leave a comment.
じゃまた

Update, Famous Hands and Robots

Hello again everyone,
Well, the past few weeks haven't turned out exactly according to plan. But now, after a few weeks of slightly stressful uncertainty, things seem to be back on track.
I left my host family on the 27th and moved into the student dorms.
While there I contacted the first WWOOF farm I was planning on going to, but never got a response.
So, I extended my dorm stay until I could find another farm.
It took a lot longer than expected.
I managed to contact another farm on Kyushu but they said that this time of year they didn't need any help.
Since it was already the middle of January by this time, I decided that it would probably be best not to go to a farm nearby and instead make sure I secure plans with farms I plan to go to after I renew my visa.
So I've spent the past week looking for farms and managed to get a response from two of them just a few days ago.
Now I'm just working out exact dates and other details with each farm and trying to get over this cold.

Alright, now that that's out of the way, more interesting stuff/pictures:

Although during the daytime I've mainly been in or around the dorms, I have managed to get out a bit with some friends.

Last weekend, four of us went to a flea market inside the city's baseball stadium.

Aside from a few snacks, none of us found anything that we wanted.

So we decided to walk to a nearby hotel that is supposedly the best in the city.
Just outside the stadium there were many hand molds of various famous people that had visited or performed at the stadium.
Some of the Western hands included Jon Bon Jovi, Phil Collins, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel and Paul McCartney.


Despite how cold it was (near or below zero at times since we saw bits of snow throughout the day) I shook a few of the hands. I'm pretty sure that my current cold is due to the weather that day, but now that I think about it, it could be from the germs on those hands.
McCartney never was my favorite Beatle...
Anyways, we moved along to the nearby, extremely fancy Fukuoka Hyatt.
Inside there was a very nice garden/restaurant which looked like it was all decorated for a wedding party.
There were also a few shops inside the hotel, one was selling kimonos and wedding dresses.


We then found an elevator that gave us an amazing view of the city, we ended up going up it twice. Two of my friends who had been to Fukuoka tower (the more common sightseeing spot) said that the view from the elevator was actually better.
Here's a video of the ride up along with a picture from the top and a shot of Fukuoka Tower.




Afterwards we reluctantly went outside into the cold and wind to see the beach for a bit.
On the way, we decided to stopped at a small shopping center. I can't remember why we stopped here exactly, but I'm guessing the cold may have had something to do with it.
Anyway, as it turned out, inside the shopping center was a small robotics shop called RoboSquare.
Inside there were various robots including this Hello Kitty one that's supposed to talk with you, but when we tried (in Japanese of course) it didn't seem to understand what we said...



This dinosaur robot was very lifelike. It responded in many different ways to noises and being petted. It would close it's eyes and make purring sounds when you scratched it under the chin.

After playing with the robots for a while, there were a few short robo-performances which we watched.
During the second dance routine by the robodogs, one of them stopped working, it was pretty amusing to watch. Luckily a friend of mine got it on film.


Afterwards, despite how cold it was, we decided that we should stop by the beach for a minute before heading back into town.
Once we got there the wind was so strong that we stayed just long enough for me to take a picture.