Trip to Busan

Preface

This trip to Busan made me gradually feel travel burnout. It’s not that I don’t like traveling abroad, but rather that I feel overseas travel has become like a capital game. You pay money to buy experiences, and the more money you spend, the better the experience.

And for some reason, I also feel like traveling abroad has become increasingly formulaic. For some reason, I find it very draining. I’d never felt this way before.

• Booking flights and hotels: comparing prices, looking for cheap flights and hotels, checking reviews and room types. If it’s too bad, it will affect the whole mood
• Flying: preparing passport, documents, luggage, transportation to the airport, immigration and customs, waiting, waiting, waiting
• After landing: finding the hotel, researching transit cards, rushing for trains, confirming the itinerary
• Check-in: drop off luggage, rest
• Running the itinerary: nothing more than shopping, sightseeing, eating, and drinking coffee

This whole chain of actions feels almost scripted. For me, every step brings pressure, and I’m always afraid that one small mistake will ruin the trip. In the end, staying at home feels more comfortable.

That said, if you live in Fukuoka, I’d still recommend taking a trip to Busan. It’s close and the flights are cheap.

I’m not sure which cafe this was, but they had strawberry cream cake and coffee. Busan’s coffee—or rather, Korean coffee in general—is pretty good. I’ve heard their Americanos are on the lighter side.

83 Haetae

For dinner, we had this very popular Korean barbecue place. It’s so popular that even though reservations are available, we still waited on site for more than three hours before getting in.

The main selling point of this barbecue restaurant is that the staff grills the meat for you at the table the whole time.

Gamcheon Culture Village. We bought socks and a dessert at the tourist shop street here, and they weren’t very good. I also got tempted and bought an ice cream, which also wasn’t good 😂.

A few of my favorite Korean dishes:

• Ginseng chicken soup
• Spicy rice cakes
• Wrap rice

The broth of the ginseng chicken soup is amazing. We ordered a half chicken, and the meat was already stewed until it practically melted in the mouth. The soup had also become slightly gelatinous, making it incredibly rich and flavorful.

I really like pork soup rice with pink shrimp paste. The first time I tried it, I thought, “Holy cow, this is way too salty—how am I supposed to eat this?” But after giving it a try, I realized the saltiness brings out all the aroma of the pork belly, and it’s incredibly satisfying.

I prefer this kind of down-to-earth comfort food.

Another cafe.

I noticed that a lot of fitness ads on Korean streets use this kind of image.

Next, we went to ride the famous Busan Capsule Train.

This was a short trip I planned to relax after leaving my job~~(quitting without a backup plan)~~. When cash flow is tight, going out to travel only makes you feel more constrained; it’s much more relaxing to take time off when you still have a job.

This was also my first trip to a country other than Japan. Although I visited Korea in 2019, that was a business trip, and I mostly stayed at the company-designated training center, so I didn’t really get to do much sightseeing. This time, I finally got to enjoy Korea properly.