JULY 26th - THE TRIP TO JAPAN- SAKE AND LIAM


The sails have been lifted and we are well under way as I begin my first entry in this new segment to the Soko and Liam Publication- Sake and Liam. Right now, I am typing away on an express train from Fukuoka, Japan to the infamously historical city of Hiroshima. The rain is surging at a monsoon-like rate outside my window but while the world out there is damp and dark, the spirits of my two travel companions and myself are light and lofty. After all, we are in Japan and on the beginning end of a week vacation that will entail stops in the traditional and enchanting city of Kyoto along with a visit to bustling metropolis of Tokyo followed by a hiking excursion up the cliffs and crags of Mount Fuji. While the won is the diminutive second cousin to the colossal Japanese yen and our pockets are light, the world is our oyster and we’re ready to see what it has to offer.

Echoing elements of a previous journey’s start, things didn’t go entirely as planned from the get-go. My first travel companion, Priya and I, had work until 7:20 and our third addition to the party didn’t get out of work until 10:00 so it was our plan to hop on the 10:30 train that night to Busan where we would pick up the ferry in the morning. Knowing that I had a 3-hour wide berth to get home, packed and over to the bus station, I agreed to have dinner with Chris and a few of the Korean teachers after work. While I expected to find myself rushing, I was actually rather responsible in excusing myself from dinner in a timely fashion and getting back to the apartment to begin my typically rushed and random pack and pray routine. While this system appears slightly flawed to most outsiders I would have to go ahead and disagree. I would actually say it is EXTREMELY flawed. Still, it’s an adventure as well. Either way, so far, my packing has proven thorough enough for my needs. Unfortunately, the mistake I was to make was set into motion well before my thoughts of packing began. Somehow the idea of bringing my visa to a foreign country never entered my mind. I’ve been traveling throughout parts of Korea without any concern for it so it never occurred to me that this trip (TO JAPAN!) might require some documentation. It wasn’t until Priya and I were in the taxi to the bus station that we went over the check list of vital items that we would need and after the first item I was already 0 for 1. Ultimately, I had to rush back to work where I had been keeping it in my desk but even before that, it was clearly evident that the 10:30 bus to Busan would be nothing but a memory by the time I got back. We ended up settling for a 12:00 departure- a departure that would dictate our actions for the rest of the night, for better or for worse.

When the bus pulled up to Busan it was sometime around 3:30 am and our options were to settle up in a Love-Motel (I’ll let the imagination of my readership to reach their own conclusions about what that is) or stay at a jim jil bang, which is pretty much a spa where you have the option of resting your head for a little of you choose. Rationally, we chose neither and headed to a nearby McDonalds. There, we asked when they would be serving breakfast and when we learned it would at 4:00 am we decided to wait it out. Two sausage, egg and cheese McMuffins later we sat around discussing our next plan of action. At that point, it was no longer worth trying to find a place to stay so we moved to a remote booth in what was a rather sizeable McDonalds and sat, snoozed and talked until sometime after 6 am. From there we hopped on the Hydrofoil for four hours until we reached the heat and humidity of one of Japan’s southern port cities, Fukuoka.

With no set plans in Fukuoka and still unsure where we would be staying for night until the next day when our Japan Rail passes would be valid and we could head to Hiroshima, we began to lug our bags and belongings through the city with a map and a few business cards leading the way. We wandered for some time, eager to find both food and shelter in an unknown city. Although we were hungry, our lodgings took precedent and we trudged through the urban milieu, using the small map on the back of our business cards to find a hostel for the night. Eventually, having no luck with our search, we grabbed a cab and showed him the card with hopes that there would be a vacancy in the first place we looked. I admit that we were lost after I had decided to take point and orienteer ourselves toward our destination but, I relinquished any real blame shortly after when we found ourselves with a cab driver who was combing the streets and driving in circles to find the very same hostel I had been trying to get us to. In fact, after we had gone in circles twice, our cab driver magnanimously turned off his meter, made a few phone calls and took it upon himself to make sure we reached where we were going. We did eventually get to where we were going and were pleasantly surprised to find it with a vacancy for three at an extremely agreeable price. In fact, we were so fortunate in our search, that our gracious landlady/hostess/friend provided us with authentic Japanese pajamas, green tea, bedding and towels and did so with a wonderful smile the entire time. We were in Japan and, so far, things were looking good.

Having established our residence for the evening, we decided it was time to explore and get some food. The theme for the evening was economy. We were in Fukuoka for the night out of convenience and necessity, not as point of interest although the city did prove to be rather interesting. When we began our mission for food in the beginning we were pretty open-minded but, at the same time, we wanted to make sure it was real Japanese cuisine and not too expensive. The search took us somewhat farther than we expected and, as we wandered, we wound through a few underground malls (underground malls that far exceeded the one in Gwangju ) and wended through a couple side streets before agreeing on a small place that served yakisoba which was a combination of lo mein-like noodles (soba), meat and vegetables, topped in a kind of soy sauce. We found it both affordable and satisfactory and were ready forge back out into the city and do some more exploring. We remained rather aimless, strolling through a park where the peculiar sound of cicadas could be heard mixing the noise of the city and stopping in at a few novelty shops. We looked at a few restaurants and discussed what we would be eating for dinner after we had worked up an appetite from walking when we discovered that in all of our ramblings we had yet to encounter a place that served sushi. This seemed both wrong and unacceptable and when we made the conscious effort to find a place with sushi it started as a fancy and became a determined quest. We refused to believe that we could go through a Japanese city without finding a place to eat sushi. It was about this time that we were overtaken by a burly but friendly Jamaican man by the name of Allen who wanted to know our story and tell us his. He told us about how he was born in Jamaica, grew up in Brooklyn and then met and married a Japanese woman who brought him there and he had been living in Fukuoka for the past 16 years. Once the introductions were behind us we inquired about a good place for sushi and we were met with a laugh as he raised his outstretched arms on either side, palms facing upward, saying “They’re everywhere, mon! You’re in Japan!” He was right, we were but based on our knowledge of the Japanese language which, like in Korea, is pretty much limited to pictures so he offered to take us to his bar and show us some brochures and maps that might help us out. Personally, I found Allen to be refreshingly jovial character but I can’t blame the other two for being a bit reticent about following him along, especially as we approached the building and he pointed to a single balcony that looked more like an apartment with Bob Marley’s face printed on a Jamaican flag and as we entered a seedy lobby and got into an even seedier elevator. Luckily, our faith in humankind prevailed and he took us into a small but inviting bar fully decked out in Jamaican regalia, equipped with a Red Stripe tap and enough red, yellow and green to satisfy any Jamaicophile. He let us take some pictures on his matching balcony and invited us to come back later when he was actually open and we left with friendly good-byes and our sincere things before continuing on our search for Japan’s national dish.

When we left Allen we thought we had a good bearing on where we were but there’s something about new cities when day turns into night and it begins to look a little different. Thinking we knew what direction to go we casually walked in a direction, talking and taking pictures with no real concern for where we were going. That directional indifference escaped me first when it started to occur to me that, while we all believe we had a sense of where we were, I had somehow become the one on point. It was my false bravado and confidence in myself that I could figure out where we were going that eventually left us completely disoriented and, in most if not all senses of the word, lost. Instead of seeing this as a roadblock in our plans, our trio kept our chins up and accepted the challenge as we wracked our brains to get some idea of where we were. It required a group effort but after finding some vague landmarks that we may have only convinced ourselves that we had seen before, we headed into a part of the underground mall and used the signs to get us into a part of the city that we were at least somewhat familiar with. Incredibly, it was the combination of a purse in a window that Priya had commented on early and a picture that I had taken of a narrow alleyway that afternoon that provided us with the most concrete landmarks for directing us home- well, that and a huge ship protruding from the façade of one of the restaurants on the corner of our hostel’s street.

Naturally, just as we were pretty confident about where we were going, the rain that had held out the entire day let us have it all at once. We were maybe 5 minutes from our hostel when we found ourselves pinned under and an awning, half-soaked and trying to wait out the deluge. After being set on sushi for healthy portion of the day, we looked at each other and decided we’d be willing to cut our losses and just grab some nearby food while we waited the rain out. Amazingly, as looked around and across the street we saw two restaurants- one Chinese, the other Indian. Our conviction had weakened but we weren’t about to sell out our traveling sensibilities. We opted out of the easy exit and dashed to a nearby convenience store where we bought some cheap umbrellas and trudged towards our hostel, unwilling to relent until we had accomplished what we had set out to do. We found our hostel, re-familiarized ourselves with our surroundings and set out towards one of the main strips nearby. First, we inspected the restaurants that were all located in the center of shopping center called Canal City. We looked at about ten restaurants with no success until we decided to walk back out on the other end of the shopping center and see what we could find on the street there. We walked past a couple of restaurants to no avail as hunger and despair began to grip us when we looked into a restaurant and asked if they served sushi. She shook her had and turned our heads downward in defeat when she stepped out into the street with us and pointed down the street with a smile and said, “Sushi!” Our eyebrows rose in disbelief but said thank you and followed her directions. Sure enough, only two restaurants down, there was a small sushi bar with about six or seven seats and trio of smiling workers welcoming into our first sushi bar in Japan.

We’re not sure how common this is in Japan or in sushi bars, in general, but after we had ordered and they began serving the sushi we realized that both our plates and our chopsticks were useless. Instead, the sushi roller placed our food directly on the bar in front of us and instructed us to grab, dip and eat with our hands. We would have been a little more taken aback by the prospect of picking up our food with our hands if it weren’t for the fact that had already handled my sushi when plopping it in front of me and then again to show us how to eat it. In my mind, if it’s okay for him to pick up my food with his hands then my fingers should be fair game. The meal was a slight bit pricier than we anticipated, but the staff there was extremely friend and although we only ordered eight rolls each, they went ahead and gave us nine. They seemed to really appreciate having us there and we were more than happy to provide them with our company.

The night finished with some ice cream wrapped in crepes and some pictures of us in our Japanese pajamas before we snagged an early bedtime and prepared for our early departure to Hiroshima in the morning.

Today, we woke up a little bit later than we expected because our alarm didn’t work but it was a far from disheartening result. My eyes had opened to the world with the sound of torrential rain pattering in my ears and stark reality that the weather today might not work to our benefit. Knowing that we’ll only be in Hiroshima for the day and that our itinerary isn’t terribly demanding, we remain content with the trajectory of our Sunday thus far.