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。