There’s a whole store in Tokyo dedicated to Star Wars stuff, and it’s pretty much the best.
There’s a restaurant in Tokyo called Nakajima — it’s in the bottom floor of a very nondescript building (if you were just walking by, you wouldn’t even know it’s a restaurant).
You know what one of the (many) great things about Tokyo is? It seems to be one of the few places left on the planet where arcades are still a big deal. Having spent an untold number of hours and quarters in various arcades as a kid, this is something I can get behind.
I had a hell of a time getting from Narita airport to my Airbnb in Tokyo. I’m not sure exactly where I went wrong — I had the stops for each of my transfers written down, and it all seemed straightforward enough. But somehow it went horribly awry, and I found myself staring at the almost comically complex criss-crossing lines of the Tokyo metro, wondering where I even was, or where I needed to go.
My time in South Korea was brief, but memorable. There are photos.
I’ve eaten some pretty awful stuff at McDonald’s over the last few months; McDonald’s in South Korea has single-handedly made up for all of it. It was actually kind of bizarre how good everything was.
The Gamcheon Culture Village in Busan is definitely one of the more striking sights I’ve seen on my trip so far.
One of the specialties in Busan is a soup called dwaeji gukbap — pork and rice soup. There’s a whole stretch of road in the Seomyeon area of town that features nothing but one restaurant after another that specializes in the dish, so yeah, it’s a big deal here.
Many of the toilets in this part of the world, particularly in China — even the ones in touristy places like museums or the airport — are of the squat variety. If you’ve never encountered one of these things, it’s basically a porcelain hole in the ground.
After visiting the Jagalchi Market, I was walking along the nearby vendor-festooned alley looking for something seafoody to eat. When you visit a country’s largest fish market, you’ve pretty much gotta eat some seafood. It would be weird if you didn’t.