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Featured Replies

1 hour ago, midtown said:

Ok.  I've been to Japan 3x.  Once as a kid.  Once for 3 nights in Tokyo and last summer for 9 days.  Is there nothing to see outside of Seoul? Thats why I was focused more on S. Korea.

I spent a month in Korea and only a day in Seoul. I'm sure Seoul has more I missed (like the DMZ) but the rest of Korea I'm not itching to go back to. Japan, on the other hand, I've been planning a return trip there since the moment I left.

Edited by dieucla98

In Kyoto now. Amazing city which seemingly is being crushed by tourism. And yet every person we come in contact with - from hotel staff to taxi drivers to our sushi chef - is warm, welcoming, curious about where we are from, and eager to speak what English they know. Amazing country, amazing city. 
 

My highlight of the day - the Adashino Nenbutsuji Temple a good 20 min hike north of the (congested) Arashiyama bamboo forest. Created in 811 by a monk to honor those who were buried there long ago, so long that those would remember them are also long gone. The muen-botoke or ‘forgotten souls’. Now more than 8000 statues of the Buddha commissioned by that monk, standing for hundreds of years. Profoundly moving. 
 

Also a bamboo forest all to ourselves. Splendid. 

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On 6/19/2025 at 6:05 AM, Txzen said:

In Kyoto now. Amazing city which seemingly is being crushed by tourism. And yet every person we come in contact with - from hotel staff to taxi drivers to our sushi chef - is warm, welcoming, curious about where we are from, and eager to speak what English they know. Amazing country, amazing city. 
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in Tokyo, we ended up at a festival at a big park.  Some vendor was giving free tote bags away, with a few things in them.  I'm standing there minding my own business, and a woman walks up and says "excuse me sir, your bag is very nice.  May I ask where you got it?" in very good English.

I pointed her to the vendor.  The GF's DIL (who's Chinese, but lived for years in Tokyo) says "she doesn't give a shit about the bag...she's just showing off her English".

The first time I went to Tokyo about 8 years ago it seemed like no one spoke English.  Last summer was completely different

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