Fukuoka/Busan - Almost 70 years after World War II ended, and with it Japan's occupation of Korea, the two countries still eye each other suspiciously. In Tokyo, ultra-nationalists protest the very existence of Shin-Okubo, the city's Koreatown. In Seoul, demonstrators assail Japan for 20th-century war crimes and its more recent claim of a few Korean-controlled oceanic rocks that both sides optimistically call “islands.”
For all the ideological barriers, the two countries are culturally and geographically intimate. This is exemplified by the relationship between the sister cities of Fukuoka (in Japan) and Busan (in South Korea), which face each other across the Tsushima Strait. Visiting both on the same trip is easy — they're linked by the Beetle, a two-decked hydrofoil — as well as enlightening. The abundant connections between Japan and Korea are particularly clear at ground, and sea, level.
Fukuoka (“lucky hill”) is the largest city on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands; Busan (“kettle mountain”) is South Korea's second-biggest city, nearer to Japan than to Seoul. Since 1990, the jet-engined ships have linked the two cities, making the trip in two hours 55 minutes.
Although Busan has approximately three times the population of Fukuoka, the two have much in common. Both are port cities with bustling industrial harbours, and both have long been involved in the exchange of goods and ideas among Japan, Korea and China. Neither is considered a top tourist attraction, but each is dynamic and easily negotiated.
Coincidentally, both cities have dual downtowns. Central Busan includes office towers and fancy shops but is mostly rough-edged and working-class. The city's more glamorous precinct is Haeundae, which stretches along the coast to the east of downtown. It's home to the upscale Centum City complex, with the Guinness-certified world's largest department store, and the annual Busan International Film Festival, one of Asia's most prestigious, which is held every October.
Fukuoka's upscale office and shopping area is Tenjin, but the city also incorporates Hakata, separate until 1876 and a continuing source of confusion. Hakata station was for decades the southern terminus of Japan's high-speed Shinkansen trains, which now continue southeast to Kagoshima. Anyone who travels by train to Fukuoka needs to know that its station is called Hakata. (So is the port where the Beetle docks.)
I arrived in Fukuoka by air from Hong Kong, using a Cathay Pacific promotional deal that bundled a free jaunt to Japan with a trip to the former British colony. The ease of getting around Fukuoka was immediately apparent: The airport's domestic terminal is just two subway stops from central Hakata.
Also obvious was the importance of tourists from certain countries. Transit and informational signs in Japan used to be in Japanese and English, but increasingly they're also in Korean and Chinese. Every such sign I saw in Fukuoka offered all four languages; the same was true in Busan.
Both Japan and Korea encourage tourism, of course, but with some lingering ambivalence. Japan was tightly closed to outsiders from around 1600 until 1854, and Korea was known as the “hermit kingdom” during the latter part of the Joseon Dynasty, which lasted to 1897. (Japan annexed the country soon after, in 1910.)
Mistrust of foreigners can be seen at both countries's entrance points. Busan's port, for example, is the only place in the world I've ever had my hand luggage X-rayed on both arrival and departure. Exchanging currency is also more involved in Japan and Korea than in, say, Hong Kong, where foreigners and their money are always welcome.
Acquiring yen at a Japanese bank is about as slow and complicated a ritual as a tea ceremony. Far simpler is Daikokuya, a chain that's not designed for English speakers, but will swap anyone's yen and dollars quickly, and at good rates. At one near Hakata station, I loaded up on yen. Then I put a few thousand of them on a Suica card — which works in most Japanese transit systems — and headed underground.
Although most small businesses in Japan don't accept credit cards, chip-enabled transit cards such as Suica can be used at many newsstands, eateries and convenience stores (transliterated and abridged in “V”-less Japanese to “conbini.”) Deployed wisely, such a card can save visitors from accumulating a pocketful of small-value coins.
As an experiment, I decided to stay in a “cabin” hotel, a slightly roomier version of Japan's hivelike capsule hotels. My room at First Cabin, in the Nakasu area, was essentially a bed inside a windowless storage container, with a light, a shelf, electrical outlets, a curtain at one end and a wall-mounted TV without a speaker. (Headphones were available.) Anyone who wanted to make noise was directed to a small lounge outside the sleeping area.
This clearly was no place to linger, but naturally I had livelier destinations. It was mid-September, time for Hojoya, one of Fukuoka's top three festivals. (Most of Japan's attractions are ranked into top-threes.) Held at a Shinto shrine, Hakozaki, Hojoya combines Shinto and Buddhist traditions with an atmosphere reminiscent of an American county fair. The occasion serves to welcome autumn and as a sort of thanksgiving, but in gratitude simply for life itself.
Hakozaki is a few blocks from the closest subway station, but as soon as I reached ground level I was swept into the mass inching toward the shrine, identifiable by its large romon, a wing-roofed tower gate. In some places, such a throng might be intimidating, but not here. One of the many civic arts the Japanese have mastered is moving safely and graciously in crowds.
The path was lined with yatai (stalls) that offered games and souvenirs, but mostly food, both traditional and imported. The lines were daunting, but I managed to purchase a few snacks, including a roasted ear of corn, a staple of Japanese street food.
Another subway ride returned me to the neighbourhood of my hotel, where art and commerce jumbled in the usual Japanese manner. The complex layering of its culture — old and new, silly and profound, ugly and beautiful — is one of the things that draws me back to Japan. The other is that it works; what makes Japan feel futuristic is not robots or bullet trains, but the ease and efficiency of daily life.
Across the street from First Cabin, on the top two floors of an eight-story retail complex, is the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, which bills itself as the world's only museum of contemporary Asian art. No woodblock prints or delicate teacups here.
Continuing through Nov. 30 is the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, featuring the work of 36 artists or teams from as far away as Pakistan, Nepal and Saudi Arabia. It's interesting to see a survey of contemporary art that includes no Westerners, although the two Cambodian participants are both refugees who grew up in the United States before returning to their birthplace. One of them appears in a video, ranting in English.
Much of the work is political, a category that often means — as in Western art today — the politics of personal identity. A Muslim woman had herself photographed in an outfit that combines a chador, a face-revealing covering, with the segments of a giant orange caterpillar; a Chinese woman turned her own anatomy inside out to invent a superhero, Uterus Man, who rides a sanitary-pad skateboard.
A Thai video artist shows people who lie face-down on the ground when they're supposed to stand for the twice-daily playing of the national anthem. A Sinhalese Sri Lankan superimposed images of himself on photos of a trip to the mostly Tamil north, a possible voyage of reconciliation after the Sinhalese majority defeated the Tamil Tiger insurgency. From a quieter region comes an exchange project between artists in Fukuoka and Busan, the Watagata Arts Network. The name is from the Korean for “come and go.”
I went, and within a few hours was walking the streets of Busan. For anyone who's been to Japan, Korea looks rather familiar. Both are packed with conbinis, department stores, English-language signage, names derived from Chinese and cat cafes, where by-the-hour guests can commune with the resident felines. The Koreans and the Japanese also share an enthusiasm for big-eyed cartoon characters, who not only entertain and advertise but also dispense safety advice.
Busan looks a bit more ragged than Fukuoka, with a dodgy Chinatown that also includes a lot of Russian businesses. Sometimes, the scruffiness is intentional: The 40 Steps area, within walking distance of the ferry terminal, retains the look of war-weary 1960s Korea, which makes it a useful movie location. There's even a your-head-here placard where visitors can pose with stills from films shot in the neighbourhood.
At the juncture of the subway's north-south Line 1 and east-west Line 2 is the more fashionable Seomyeon. This area of pedestrianized streets offers the usual array of Body Shops and Pizza Huts, as well as homegrown businesses and the Angel Hotel, where I booked a traditional ondol room. It's designed for a yo, the Korean equivalent of a futon, which is laid on a ceramic floor. The surface is heated during cold weather, a potentially nice touch, but the floor is appreciably harder than the tatami mats of traditional Japanese lodgings.
A subway ride east took me to Centum City, where I explored the massive Shinsegae department store, which has 18 floors (including underground parking and three stories of head room for the rooftop golf range). Yet the store seems to offer less merchandise than its largest Japanese rivals. It's filled out by an ice rink, a large spa and a theme park that includes Dinosaur Land. There's also a cinema, but big deal: The hulking yet not-world's-largest Lotte department store next door has one of those, too.
Overwhelmingly, the goods in both stores are prestige American and European products, supplemented by a few Japanese lines. In Shinsegae's basement food hall, I skipped Johnny Rockets in favor of a rotating-belt sushi place.
There are some notable historical attractions in the hills around Busan, but I opted to go a little further, to Gyeong-ju, home of Korea's only two Unesco world heritage sites. Once the capital of the Silla Dynasty (57 BCE-935 CE), Gyeong-ju has serene temples, ancient ruins and mountain hiking trails.
The excursion also offered a chance to ride KTX, Korea's 10-year-old high-speed rail system. Like a lot of things in Korea, KTX is less slick than its Japanese counterpart, yet entirely serviceable. A 30-minute sprint, mostly through tunnels, took me from Busan to Singyeongju. (“Sin,” pronounced “shin,” means the same thing it does in Japanese: “new.”) A 15-minute bus ride to the centre of the nondescript city was just the first of many buses. Gyeong-ju's landmarks are mostly scattered around its outskirts and served by two loop lines, running in opposite directions.
Fairly close to the centre is the Gyeong-ju National Museum, an impressive complex of several separate buildings. One structure, Wolji Hall, contains only artifacts excavated from a pond at the former Silla Palace. Among them are items that were probably imported from Japan during the Nara period (710-794), long before hydrofoils.
Within walking distance is what is probably the area's oldest surviving structure, the stone pagoda at Bunhwangsa Temple, built in 634. The pagoda has a lost a few stories as it's collapsed inward on itself, yet retains its traditional form.
To the south, a large lake has become the focus of a highly Americanised resort. The loop bus swoops past this area and ends at Bulguksa Temple, which is impressive both for its architecture and its sylvan hillside setting. The Unesco-certified complex was founded in 751, although most of its structures have been rebuilt much more recently.
A 30-minute uphill hike, or another bus, leads to the other world heritage site, the Seokguram Grotto. Photography is forbidden in this carved-granite cave temple, where a large seated Buddha, disappointingly behind glass, is flanked by 12 sculpted guards.
Bulguksa Station, on a conventional train line, offers slow rides south to the Haeundae side of Busan, whose recently relocated station is convenient to nothing. I took the train anyway, to get a different view of the territory between Busan and Gyeongju, and was rewarded with a mostly industrial landscape. The train ride, a bus to the subway and then the trip back to my hotel lasted longer than the hydrofoil voyage that conveyed me, the next day, back across the placid strait to Fukuoka.
IF YOU GO:
GETTING THERE:
The Beetle and its Korean equivalent, the Kobee, run four or five times a day. A weekday round trip costs about $170 (about R1 700). Terminal and fuel surcharges add about $25 each way. JR Kyushu's Web site offers basic information in English, but its reservation page is in Japanese. For English-language booking, try www.aferry.com/jr-kyushu-beetle-ferry.htm.
From Busan Station to Singyeongju by KTX takes a little under 30 minutes. A standard ticket is about $17.
WHERE TO STAY:
First Cabin Fukuoka
3-chome 7-24 Nakasu, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka
+81 92-260-1852
www.first-cabin.jp/locationlist/fukuoka.html
A clean and efficient, if kennel-like, place to sleep. Singles $28-36.
Angel Hotel
Busan 46-7, Jungang-daero 692beon-gil, Busanjin-gu
+82 51-802-8223
An old-fashioned but technologically up-to-date hotel in the lively Seomyeon area. Both Korean- and Western-style rooms. Singles $45-60.
WHERE TO EAT:
Informal, relatively inexpensive restaurants are common, and abundant in train stations, department stores and shopping and entertainment districts. The food, if seldom sublime, is never bad.
WHAT TO DO:
Hakozaki Shrine
1-22-1 Hakozaki, Higashi Ward, Fukuoka
+81 92-641-7431
A five-minute walk from Hakozaki-Miya-Mae subway station.
One of Japan's top three Hachiman (god of war) shrines and the site of several major festivals.
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum
Riverrain centre Building
3-1 Shimokawabata-machi, Hakata Ward, Fukuoka
+81 92-263-1100
10 a.m.-8 p.m.; closed on Wednesdays. Admission about $1.80.
faam.city.fukuoka.lg.jp/eng/home.html
Subway: Nakasu-Kawabata station
This two-floor gallery bills itself as the world's only museum of contemporary Asian art.
Busan
etour.busan.go.kr/index.busan
40 Steps
4-3, Saem-gil 44beon-gil, Jung-gu
Subway: Junggang
In this dockland neighbourhood, preserved buildings and statues that represent former inhabitants memorialise Korea in the 1960s.
Centum City
35 Centum nam-daero, Haeundae-gu, Busan, South Korea
+82 22-026-9000
Subway: Centum City
A high-rise mini-city in eastern Busan, home to the Busan International Film Festival and the world's largest department store
Gyeongju
guide.gyeongju.go.kr/deploy/eng/
Once the capital of the Silla Dynasty, this area has dozens of historic sites, including temples, tombs, ruins and outdoor statuary.
Gyeongju National Museum
186, Iljeong-ro, Gyeongju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea
+82 54-740-7500
9 a.m.-6 p.m. on weekdays, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. on Saturdays from March to December. Free.
gyeongju.museum.go.kr/html/en/index.html
This complex of museums holds artifacts from the Silla Dynasty, which once ruled southeastern Korea.
Bulguksa Temple
15-1 Jinhyeon-dong, Gyeongju-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do
+82 54-746-9913
guide.gyeongju.go.kr/deploy/eng/
Admission about $1.50
This large hillside Buddhist temple complex is one of Korea's two Unesco World Heritage Sites.
INFORMATION:
Fukuoka
www.yokanavi.com/eg
Busan
english.busan.go.kr/HomeMain.do
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