Tokyo Calm

I took my first-ever visit to Japan in mid-October, checking out Tokyo for the weekend while my friends Charlotte and Alex were visiting. I didn't want to travel out of Seoul again so soon (5 days) after my trip to China, but when your friends from America say they will be hanging out a two-hour flight away from you and you live in Asia, you go!

My health wasn't at its best when I arrived in Tokyo as I was battling one of the worst colds I have faced in years (I blame the awful Chinese air pollution for weakening my immune system). But I was comforted by the fact that I wouldn't need to worry about any of the nasty surprises to my health (drinking water, dubious food, etc.) that one finds in China. Tokyo has smog but nowhere close to the level of Chinese cities. I had heard that the language barrier was difficult to navigate so I hoped I wouldn't get too lost.

Those quirky maid cafes

I didn't have much time on the ground and Narita Airport is far away from the center of this massive city.  Charlotte invited to sneak me in to her Friday night fancy dinner sponsored by the The Institute of International Finance (IIF), a group of bankers responsible for doing important things like renegotiating Greek debt. I had very specific instructions from Charlotte to pack a tie and work attire, but I packed in a rush and totally forgot to pack these.

Though I thought this meant I would need to find dinner on my own, it unexpectedly led to my first Japanese cultural experience – the convenience store. Now in Seoul, convenience stores are ubiquitous and generally awesome. In addition to snacks and drinks they usually carry items like fruit, vegetables, milk, umbrellas. So when I'm too lazy to walk the 6 minutes to my local grocery store, I can walk 2 minutes to 7-Eleven and get my basic essentials. The Japanese convenience store takes this concept to another level – you can buy ties and dress shirts!! Granted, this is not runway fashion we're talking about here. I bought the largest shirt I could find but the arms were still too short...I guess I am a little bit bigger than the average Japanese man. However, convenience store shirt and tie paired with khakis I had packed turned out to work great and I greatly enjoyed my fine steak dinner and wine as I listened to boring bankers speak about monetary policy!

Tokyo Imperial Gardens. Clearly I wasn't feeling my best, but it was a lovely day.

Charlotte was working on Saturday so I headed with Alex to Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics mecca. The area is quirky and ridiculous – quintessentially Japanese. You can find comic books and DVDs of every anime character that has ever existed or crawl into one of the "maid cafes" that dot the neighborhood. If you need stimulation you can queue up for the Pachinko Slot rooms, massive floors with nothing but Japanese men and women of all ages watching spinning slot wheels and smoking. It's colorful and busy and everything I pictured Japan being.

We took in the Imperial Gardens also that day but I was tired in the evening with my illness and never made it out to see the Tokyo nightlife. Alas, maybe another trip. Sunday morning we walked through the Azakusa area and saw the famous Buddhist temple there, and I took the elevator up Tokyo Tower to get a glimpse of the city from up high, though the city is far too big for you to be able to see all of it.

In my limited time in Tokyo, I was impressed by a few things.

• The quirkiness of Japanese culture – maid cafes and body-pillow girlfriends and Hello Kitty and those crazy slot machines
• The incredible cleanliness of Tokyo – I have never seen a cleaner city. I think one could even eat off the floor of the Tokyo subway in the morning. Seoul is safe and clean too but Tokyo is simply the highest standard.
• The calm and harmony amidst all that activity. At rush hour you find millions of people going every which way but somehow no one bumps into you. I walked quiet sidewalks in the center of one of the most densely populated metropolitan areas on Earth. Incredible.
• The strong attachment to individuality, so different from Korea. The non-businesspeople express themselves through fashion so much more confidently than the conformist Koreans (Japanese businesspeople still conform). You see a lot of people alone in Tokyo...people eating alone, playing slots and video games alone. I imagine Tokyo could be an immensely lonely place for a foreigner (much like was shown in Lost in Translation).

I might go back to Tokyo while I am in Asia but I am definitely going back to Japan. It seems so relaxing.

China – Beijing and Xian

At the end of September, I jumped off the Korean peninsula for the first time since my arrival to travel to China for a week.  The weekend of September 29 - October 1 was a Korean holiday called Chuseok, a mid-autumn festival celebrated on the day of the full moon.  In Korea, this is a time when Koreans hit the roads to go see their families, hence why Americans have dubbed this "Korean Thanksgiving".  With another holiday also scheduled for October 3 (National Foundation Day) and as my vacation was fully usable from day 1 on the job, the opportunity to travel for a week while using only 3 days paid vacation seemed too good to pass up.

One of many delicious roast duck restaurants in Beijing (Quanjude)

I'm writing this long after the fact (it's funny how much you forget so quickly after you travel) but I wanted to jot down some quick thoughts about my 2nd trip to China before it fades into memory even further.

I traveled to China with my business school and Samsung colleague Dave and his wife Mor.  They convinced me that they would be good travel buddies and indeed they were!  Thankfully we had similar travel preferences – my days of hopping around with a backpack through youth hostels are over and the three of us agreed on just about everything in the itinerary.

It was their first time in China and my second, though I had never been to either Beijing or Xi'an before.  Also, unbeknownst to us when we booked the flights from the US, the mid-autumn festival is also celebrated in China, even more intensely than Korea.  Many Chinese take the whole week off to travel and domestic tourism sites are absolutely mobbed.  The weather was wonderful in China at the beginning of October – perfect temperature and no rain – but lesson learned to travel either the week before or the week after!

Inside the crowded Forbidden City (not-so-forbidden these days)

Getting to Beijing from Seoul is not hard, takes less than two hours by plane.  You do need to get the Chinese visa in advance, which is relatively straightforward though does require completing a long application form and paying a stiff fee if you're a US citizen (about $165 for a double-entry visa).  When we landed at Beijing's enormous airport (2nd busiest in the world), the train into the city was easy to find and a helpful Chinese lady helped us figure out the pass system to ride the subway.

We were staying at a hotel near Tiananmen Square and after settling our bags down walked over.  The square is quite large and can hold about 600,000 people.  Chairman Mao's portrait stares at you from the end and you can see all sorts of Chinese people walking around and kids with their rear ends exposed. The Forbidden City is relatively close but we saved that for another day, taking a long walk through a small part of massive Beijing.

On our second morning we weren't quite ready for the Forbidden City just yet, so we toured the Temple of Heaven, a big complex south of where we were staying.  After a few hours there and another scarily cheap meal, we took the subway to Tiananmen and thought we were entering the Forbidden City from there, but ended up in the Working People's Cultural Palace.  We thought it was lovely and surprisingly empty, which given that we weren't in the actual Forbidden City wasn't too surprising!  There were a number of Chinese shooting wedding pictures.

Light moment at the Great Wall. Every bit as good as the hype.

Eventually we found the moat surrounding the Forbidden City but it was too late for us to enter, so instead we got up high into a pagoda on a hill overlooking the City in Jingshan Park.  The perfect place to view the sunset!  Beijing is a very flat city, so being up on a high felt unusual.

Day 3 in Beijing was Great Wall time.  We wanted to hike the Mutianyu section because we had read it was less crowded than the other sections, though still well-maintained.  We figured out how to board a 7AM bus to the wall – difficult to find and we had to ignore a Chinese lady trying to trick us into riding her tourist van. The bus was mobbed with Chinese and we stood for almost three hours to get to our destination! But the end result was worth the painful ride. The Wall is very impressive and surrounded by beautiful lush green mountains.  The parts of the wall that weren't packed with Chinese were a relaxing treat and the hiking is good exercise too – some sections are quite steep. And at Mutianyu you can ride a toboggan down! I can't recommend the $1 bus, though.  Mor used some serious Israeli fighting skills to get us seats on the ride back to Beijing.

Thoroughly exhausted after a day of wall-climbing and bus-riding, we treated ourselves to some of Beijing's finest roast duck at DaDong. A culinary masterpiece at an affordable price, less than $50/person!

The Working People's Cultural Palace looks a bit like the Forbidden City, as is unfortunately overlooked.

For our last full day in Beijing, we decided to brave the crowds at the Forbidden City.  On China's crazy, psycho touring week known as Mid-Autumn Festival, this place is to be avoided! A must-see on any person's Beijing itinerary, the city contained an endless stream of people, starting with the 45 minute line to buy an admission ticket. But I can't say I regret going. Even with the outrageous Chinese crowds the Forbidden City was fascinating, which can only mean it must be more incredible without the mobs of people. The City is huge, literally a city within a city, and one of the grandest palaces you will ever visit.

Our last day found us at the Summer Palace, also lovely but far too crowded, and the Beijing Olympic Park, which isn't all that exciting. You can go into the Birds Nest stadium but we were put off by the price to get in, which was almost equal to the Forbidden City.

An overnight bus transported us to Xi'an, one of the four great ancient capitals of China. The city is historic and contains a mix of historic temples and bell towers alongside modernity, and has the largest city wall in the world (though the city now extends far beyond it). Xi'an is overpriced compared with Beijing – less impressive attractions but higher prices. The only tourist attraction begging your attention here are the Terracotta Warriors, uncovered only about 40 years ago about a 90 minute bus ride outside the city. The Warriors are impressive, each with different facial features and some quite well-preserved. That said, I thought the place was disappointing. You don't actually get to walk amongst the warriors...instead you're staring at the pit where the archaeologists did the excavation back in the 1970s. Well, if you're Bill Clinton the Chinese make an exception!

As close as I could get to the Warriors

China was a good trip but it felt really great to return to Korea.  I enjoyed the relatively friendly Chinese people, the outrageously inexpensive prices (for everything except Xi'an tourist sites), the many tourists who took pictures of us, and having all the logistics work out in a difficult-to-figure-out country. However, by the end of a week in China a combination of physical exertion from constantly being on my feet, some dubious Chinese food, and the awful air pollution had me rather worn down. China is like Vegas for me – I can only handle it in small doses – and a full week in China left me exhausted and my immune system weakened. I could have used another vacation to recover from this one!