Nara, Seoul, differences

Time for post number 4!
The last city I visited in Japan was Nara - also once capital and despite being much smaller than Kyoto still having more temples than the humble traveller can visit in a day.
Here some impressions:

Nara is famous for having hundreds of deer running around everywhere and trying to get cookies from tourists

huge temple containing a massive Buddha statue (next picture)

massive Buddha!

Right before my flight to Seoul I also managed to meet up with Aoi, an other Japanese friend from UCSD and together we explored the harbor area of Osaka.

One other impressions of Japan that struck me was that there are only very very few public trash cans. When I arrived in Nara I ate a banana and just couldn't get rid of my banana peel. I guess I missed noticing half of the sights because I was looking out for a trash can all the time...
A friend told me that the Japanese government actually actively removed public trash cans after a toxic gas attack in one of these in 1995. Following this brilliant strategie I propose we should tear down all tall buildings as a precautionary measure against terror attacks...

Some info about costs so far: All in all Japan has been quite expensive - I've paid a total of 290€ for accomodation (for 6 nights in hotels -> ~50€/night) and a total of about 450€ for everything else (I guess at least half of this for transportation). Therefore I payed about 90€/day in Japan.

On Friday night I finally arrived in Seoul, where my Korean friend Geebum picked me up from the airport. He had invited me to stay with his family for the weekend and as it is rather uncommon for Koreans to invite people to their home, I feld quite honored by his invitation. He and his family were incredibly hospitable, making these days some of my best of the trip and it was also quite interesting for me to see a Korean home from the inside. During the following day he showed me some different neighborhoods of Seoul and gave me a good first impression the city.

Geebum and me on the way from the airport

expensive apartments here

like this architecture!

In the evening we met up with my german friend Caroline that was also travelling in Seoul - quite an coincidence! In fact she also had problems with her stomach so we could empathise with each other.

CaroCaro!

On the next day we met up with more Koreans and Mikkel from Norway who also made his way to Seoul and had some Korean food. It was quite nice to met up and see everyone again. Right after leaving UCSD, I did not imagine to be able to see so many of them again so soon :-)

desert!
(I case you are wondering about the girls making the peace sign in all the pictures - its considered to be cute...)

For the next days I was sharing a room with Mikkel in a guesthouse. This was the entrance staircase - WTF?

Worst stair ever! Bring a German engineer!

Unfortuately that place was not very good and we used to speak of it as "our tent" because staying in our tiny room felt more like beeing in a tent than a hotel. Also the shower was so smoothely integrated into the bathroom that there was practically no difference between shower and bathroom -.-

lots of locks ... and Mikkel

nice view over Seoul!

One thing that seems to be an issue for me is making enough breaks and not starting to get in the mode where I'm just kind of checking off sights from my to do list without really enjoying them. Of course it seems obvious that you should not go sightseeing when you are not in the mood or already full with impressions - but now imagine you beeing in an exciting city like Tokyo (or whatever is interesting to you) and making the decision to take a day off and just relax with a book - not an easy decision, right?
In this context, having in mind Maslow's hierarchy of needs, what I also discovered is that you need to be in a generally very good state/ your basic needs fulfilled etc. to be able to enjoy seeing the foreign environment. For me, when I'm tired, or hungry or feel bad for whatever reason than there's actually no value in doing sightseeing for me at all. However as I said before, its kinda hard to resist this inner pressure of "you need to get the most out of it". In this context, beeing sick made it really hard for me to properly enjoy the travel on some days and unfortunately after finally getting rid of my stomach problems (lasting for a week) it seems I caught a cold now - wtf? -.-

All in all I was surprised to see more differences between Seoul and Japan than I had expected. Many of the everyday life details are different, the people seem dfferent and actually also look different, cars are driving on different sides, food is different, city design different. I'm quite curious to see China next and expect it to be quite different to these as well. For most people in Europe its all just "Asia" but I'm glad to have a much more sophisticated view of this region now.