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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Our Grand Adventure

I just have 2 days left of teaching, then Saturday is D's birthday and Sunday is the big day. J and I leave for a month of traveling in Japan and China early that morning. Here's a quick overview of our itinerary:

August 8: Leave Seoul for Tokyo
August 8-12: Spend time in Tokyo and its environs, maybe make a day trip to Mt Fuji or Nikko
August 13: Take high-speed train* to Kyoto
August 13-15: Spend time in Kyoto
August 15: Take local train to Nara (Japan's first capital, and a city celebrating its 1300th anniversary this year)
August 15-17: Spend time in Nara
August 18: Take local train to Fukuoka
August 19: Take Ferry from Fukuoka to Busan, South Korea

We'll spend 1-2 days in Busan and eventually train back up to Seoul for our flight to Beijing**. So far, our Chinese itinerary is much simpler than our Japanese one:

August 21: Fly to Beijing
August 28: Fly to Shanghai
September 4: Fly to Seoul

We'll spend 3 days hanging out in Seoul (and picking up our luggage from LT, who graciously agreed to look after it while we're backpacking). On September 7, we head to California.

*We bought a Japan rail pass which allows unlimited travel on any trains in Japan, even the high-speed Shinkansen. I'm pretty excited.
**We received our Chinese visas this week.

I also drew a simpler version of our itinerary.