Busan to Tokyo-at the Cruise Ship Hostel

Yesterday, I left South Korea. I enjoyed my time here-but I felt my time in Busan was over. I didn't think there was more to see from the city and more to get from the country. The folks there tend to dress very well-I noticed. And it is hard to find a garbage can. If you have trash very few are looking to take it from you. But I had a good time here-the food was good, and the people are very friendly. I never mastered the language. Hello is something like ansenio, and thank you is a word like konsumida-but it was hard to master those two words.

So I went to the airport to get the flight to Tokyo. I checked in and found my checked bag was over the limit by 7 pounds, which would have meant paying $35 for my bag. The check in agent offered to let me put stuff in my carry on/camera bag-so I took my pants and a pair of shoes and put it in to my carry on bag. So that is what I did-plus I had an additional plastic bag to bring on the plane. The two hour flight was uneventful and we we're served dinner of some type of pork which I usually don't eat but I tried.

After landing in Tokyo and getting my bad, I looked at my phone for directions to the hostel. Somebody on Trip Advisor wrote that getting to this exact metro station near the hostel took only one change of trains, after an hours-ride near the airport. I took a picture of the post with my phone, and showed a ticket agent at the airport rail station. She said that those trains stopped running for the day, which I found hard to believe-it was around 5:00 pm. I asked her how many of those trains we're-she said 20 every day. When I further questioned her, she said another train would come in an hour-so I just had to wait an hour-or in 24 minutes, a train would come with an additional change of trains across the platform. I made that change, and after a long train ride to the city, I was at the hostel by 7:30.

The hostel is a big hostel, in a outlying neighborhood of the city. It had an escalator and a giant lobby. I checked in, paid to do a little laundry, and learned there was a meet and greet in the lobby at 8:00 pm. It was announced on the loud speaker, aka cruise ship style. I decided to go-7 folks we're there-including two Japanese folks, a freshman in college and her mom, who weren't staying at the hostel, but came by to help with their English skills. I talked to them, with another guy from Canada. I learned that the English taught in Japan isn't speaking, but reading and writing, and the classes are horrible-the student's class was boring. I learned Mcdonalds is called something like Mcs-call Japanese people can't say Mcdonalds. I also learned the girl was learning French in school, but her French actually seemed worse then mine, and I don't know much.

The meet-up lasted about 2 hours. I still hadn't had dinner-but there was a supermarket next door, and I had what looked like salmon sashimi, but it was a very salty fish, and what looked like potato salad-but was actually about 50% wasabi, so I had an extremely salty and extremely spicy dinner. Then I walked around and went back to the room, and went to bed.