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In July I attended the 11th Bureyong mudfest, the most popular summer event in the foreign community and one of the biggest young summer parties in South Korea. We spent two days on the beach, taking sunbaths and playing in the water.

Mud-Showered

There were lots of Koreans but this place is specially attractive for foreigners because they don’t care about getting muddy. I think that approximately 50% of the people were foreigners, out of them probably 90% were ESL teachers.

The main attraction of the festival is the mud. Huge quantities of mud. Grey, sticky, oily and dirty mud. It’s a lot of fun and is also supposed to be very healthy being this mud is essentially the same mud you can find in the expensive spas.

The feeling of the mud is greasy. You can swim in the mud or paint your body when it is still wet. It takes like 15 minutes to dry on your skin. After that you look like a statue. And there is a plus advantage, the mud is the perfect sun protector!

Hitting on the Mudfest woman

Apart of the mud buffet where you can paint yourself, there were also giant slides, a mud jail, a soccer game and several mudfighting rings. I couldn’t try the slides but the rings were a lot of fun.

Other activities were dancing under the mud rain and color painting. As this is Korea, while we were covering our skin we were eating large quantities of Korean food and drinking a lot of soju.

“The Joint Security Area (JSA) or Panmunjeom, is the only portion of the Korean Demilitarized ZoneSouth and North Korean forces stand face-to-face. The section is reserved between the two
Koreas for diplomatic engagements, and until March 1991 was also the site of military negotiations between North Korea and the United Nations Command (UNC)” - Wikipedia

Recently I visited the South Korean Joint Security Area. It was a interesting trip discovering the last frontier of the cold war and my second experience with North Korea. Before being allowed to enter the JSA, I was given a briefing during which I signed a document which states, in part, “The
visit to the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom will entail entry into a hostile area and possibility of injury or death as a direct result of enemy action”.

JSA. In the back Panmungak which is the North Korean side.
This picture was taken from the pagoda in the South Korean side.

Once in the JSA, It was very interesting to be in the MAC Conference Room, the famous room where the peace negotiations took place. This room is the only place where you can be in South Korea and North Korea at the same time. The Military Demarcation Line runs underneath this room so technically you can cross over into North Korea!.

Inside the MAC Conference Room

I also have the opportunity to see the other notable landmarks within the JSA as the Bridge of No Return and the place where there was the tree where the Axe Murder Incident of 1976 took place. James Bond (aka Pierce Brosnan) crossed this bridge in a scene from Die Another Day. This bridge was used to exchange prisoners after the end of the Korean War in 1953.

Bridge of no return

I also saw from the distance the North Korean “Propaganda Village” and the world’s tallest flagpole. The flag must be taken down when it is raining as its immense weight cannot be supported by the tower.

In summary, this has been my more cultural and historic visit in South Korea. It was extremely interesting to see with my own eyes one of the world’s most heavily defended borders of the Cold War and the scenario where lots of recent historic events have took place is an unforgettable experience.

Hiroshima was our last stop in Japan before returning to Seoul (You can also read my Kyoto and Tokyo experiences). We got the Shinkansen in Tokyo early in the morning and we arrived at Hiroshima around 12, so we only stayed there for half a day which was enough to have a glimpse of the city.

Memorial park, at the front the flame that will be on as long as atomic weapons are considered weaponry

We visited the Atomic Bomb museum and we were also sightseeing the different memorials they have in the public park for the Korean people and the children of the first atomic attack in history. The museum is really good and it shows in a very clear way the tragedy this city suffered in August 1945. In the museum there is the famous clock that stopped at the exact time of the attack and other personal objects of the people that were close to the epicenter at the time of the tragedy.

The A-dome

Hiroshima was completely devastated. All the wood based buildings of the city (5km radius at that time) were destroyed and all the earthquake-ready concrete based were in ruins or completely destroyed. It is estimated that 160000 people died in the first months as a direct consequence of the attack but around 5000 people died every year since then as consequence of the radiation effects.

Paper cranes

The most famous case is Sadako Sakasi, which was 2 years old at the time of the attack. She was surprisingly intact after the bomb, but she got leukemia after 10 years. Then she started to make paper cranes because it is a Japanese belief that the cranes can make your wish come true. She wanted to make 1000 cranes wishing to stay alive but died before it was completed. After that, her classmates finished her work. Now the cranes are the symbol of the city and everyday the memorials receive thousands of paper cranes made by people all around the world.

Children memorial

Hiroshima is mainly known because of the bomb attack but there are other interesting sights. In the night we got a ferry to visit the famous flooded Tori in the entrance of the Miyajima buddist shrine on Miyajima island. This is considered one of the most beautiful places in Japan but we got there a bit late and we only had time to see the Tori from the boat, a bit far to make a good picture.

The clock stopped at the time of the attack

The next day we got the Shinkansen to Fukouka just on time to get the ferry to come back to South Korea.

Tokyo is the current capital of Japan and is where you can see modern Japanese culture and society. The first place we visited was the Imperial Palace’s east garden which is very close to Tokyo Station and it’s the only part of the palace open for visitors.

After being in Kyoto for two days we were quite tired of visiting gardens,temples and shrines so next place we visited was Akihabara, the electronic and manga district. Here we started to understand why these people are obsessed with videogames (It’s pretty hard to find other than Japanese games here) and manga. The arcades are also interesting with lots of cloth/catching machines where you can play for weird giant stuffed animals or videogames, or candy or ice cream or the weirdest things.

After Akibahara we headed to check in to our place. In Tokyo we stayed in a Ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese inn. I really loved this place, with the minimalist furniture and decoration concept and sleeping on the floor on Japanese tatamis. I understand it may not be a very practical way to live, but I love this concept anyway.

In the night we visited Tokyo Tower and we could see the beautiful night skyline of the city. After that we had dinner with Yuki, a very nice couchsurfer that helped us a lot providing lots of information about the places and the culture. If you ever read this, thank you for the wonderful dinner Yuki!

The next day we visited Harajuku, the fashion street where the young Tokyo people develop new radical styles. The street is a fashion show of fascinating people wearing shocking styles. There are general trends, like the girls that wear gothic lolita and sweet lolita and a lot of guys dressing with Visual Key style, but I have the feeling that here everybody creates their own style.

After being tired of the shopping, we headed for Shibuya, the famous extremely busy intersection where lots of people cross from one side of the street to another like ants. It’s fascinating to stay here for some minutes and see how the people accumulate close to the crosswalk while waiting for the lights to change color, and see the people moving in different directions sewing themselves with the people that come from the other side.

After Shibuya we went to Shinjinku and we walk around the Kabukichō entertainment and red light district. We went there in the daylight and it was clearly not a good idea because we could not see anything interesting. After that we went to Tokyo bay and we enjoyed the skyline watching the sunset.

Soon, we headed to Asakusa, where we saw Sensō-ji, the most famous Buddist temple in Tokyo. Here I met my friend Ines who is working on an internship in Tokyo. We had sushi together and then we come back to Shinjuku in the night, which was lighted on, and it looked extremely busy and pretty different in comparison with the boring district we saw a few hours before.

Two days in the city. Not enough to explore throughfully one of the biggest and characteristic urban areas in the world, but enough to have a glimpse of this dynamic city. Early in the morning the next day we got the Shinkansen to Hiroshima.

Kyoto is the old capital of the Japanese empire and is still considered the cultural center of the Japanese culture. Is very close to Osaka, merely 30 minutes in a regular train. Other cities in the Kensai province are Nara and Kobe. In this part of the country there are thousands of temples and shrines, 300 hundred of them only in Kyoto.

We stayed in Kyoto two days to have a glimpse of the Japanese traditional culture. In our first day we visited the Higashi and Nishi Honganji Temple and we had lunch in Shosei-en which is a traditional Japanese garden.

Playing in Shosei-en

We were couchsurfing in Kyoto with Makoto, a very kind Japanese guy that offered us to stay in his guest house. In case you ever read this, thank you for your hospitality Makato!

The next day we visited the famous Fushimi Inari Shrine (伏見稲荷大社 Fushimi-Inari-taisha) where the famous tunnel made of thousands of individual orange Torii is. This is considered one of the most beautiful places in Japan and it has appeared in lots of movies. Each one of the Torii represent a wish and you can walk all the way up to another shrine in the top. In the Shinto shrine at the top we ask for a blessing for our future.

After that we went to the Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺) temple, and later on we walk around Kyoto visiting other buddist temples and Shinto shrines. In the evening we went to Gion.

Gion (祇園) is the traditional Geisha district. If you haven’t yet, you should read Memories of a Geisha which I seriously recommend to have a picture of what a geisha duties are and what Gion is. There are only around 300 Geishas left in Japan, out of them 80 are in Kyoto. We started walking through Gion and we realized that nowadays it is a strange place where old teahouses are in the same street of (strip)clubs and martini bars just besides traditional restaurants.

We didn’t want to leave Kyoto without seeing a Geisha so we stayed in front of a big teahouse where expensive European cars were waiting in front of the entrance. After a few minutes, the Geishas started to appear in the streets. We were lucky because we saw 5 of them. They don’t mind the people making pictures but they don’t pose, so at the end we were like paparazzi, pursuing them in the rain of Gion’s streets.

Geisha on Gion district

After seeing the Geishas we felt that we had done everything we wanted to do in Kyoto and the next day we got the Shinkansen to Tokyo.