In August, I went to Korea for a brief 4-day trip with a Japanese tour. I haven't really talked about it all too much so now I will take a chance to reflect on my experiences in Seoul.

Seoul is a very beautiful city. Unfortunately, it was raining for 2 of the days I was there, but that just made the other 2 that much better. Seoul has rougly 10 million people living there and is a very simple city to navigate around. There are city buses running every 20 minutes and they take you to all the major tourist attractions that Seoul has to offer. There's around 30 of these attractions and you can buy a day pass and use the bus all day to get to these locations. I went to Seoul Tower and a few of the temples around. Check my photos for more information on these locations.

As for differences between Japan and Korea, it is surprisingly similar. Many Koreans are taught English and Japanese in school and are also familiar with the Kanji from China. This gives them an advantage in learning Asian languages as they are forced to start early in school. Both of our tour guides were Koreans who spoke fluent Japanese and it was incredibly difficult to tell if they were Korean or if they were Japanese.

My biggest complaint about Korea is their poor water system and their uncleanliness. You gotta put your toilet paper in a little garbage bin beside the toilet because the sewage system cannot handle toilet paper. Also, the subways and streets are often very dirty, versus Japan where they are cleaned weekly. I even think the trains here in Japan are cleaned every morning but since everyone is much more clean here, I am not sure about that.

I had many experiences in Korea so I will talk about them individually in a short series of posts about the food, people, tourism, and transporation.