Visa Run to Fukuoka, Japan

In order to teach in Korea, you need to have an E2 visa.  Since we are already in Korea on a tourist visa (good for 90 days), we needed to leave the country to get our E2 visa.  The easiest way to do that was to take a ferry from Busan, South Korea to Fukuoka, Japan.  For more information about this process please check out the following two websites.  They helped us out tremendously.

1.  http://esl-teaching-resources.blogspot.ca/2010/07/2010-fukuoka-visa-run.html
2.  http://wiki.galbijim.com/Fukuoka_visa_run#Korean_Consulate_in_Fukuoka

We started our trip on Wednesday at 7:13am aboard the KTX train from Iksan to Busan.  We had to meet at the Busan Office of Education at 1:30pm to pick up documents.  When we got to Busan, we took the subway to the Office of Education.  It was pouring down rain - it is monsoon.  Walking to and from the Office of Education was like swimming with shoes on.  Once we got our paperwork, we headed to the ferry station.  We didn't pre-arrange our travel so we shouldn't have been too shocked when we were told that all of the ferries returning on Friday were completely booked.  We had to wait until Saturday.  Too bad we only had enough clothes for 2 days instead of 3....

The Beetle - It takes 2 hours, 55 minutes from Busan to Fukuoka

We arrived in Japan at 7pm.  And guess what?  We didn't book our hotel in advance.  So, we spent about an hour walking around looking for a hotel to stay in for 3 nights.  We found a Toyoko Inn (Hakata-guchi Ekimae Gion).  However, they only had rooms available for 2 nights (Wednesday and Thursday nights).  We had been traveling all day and just wanted a place to rest so we took it.  We were just going to have to find a different hotel on Friday.

We woke up early on Thursday morning to go to the Korean Consulate.  Our paperwork had to be turned in before 11:30am to be processed by the next afternoon.  We were there by 9:30am and spent no more than 5 minutes in the office.  We went back to the hotel and were so exhausted from the previous day that we took a 4-hour nap.

When we woke up from the nap, we looked outside to see people lining the streets and men in "costumes" walking around.  We didn't know what was going on so we decided to take video.  As it turns out, a festival was going on: Hakata Gion Yamakasa.  Here is the video we took:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9VZidXOKbw&feature=g-upl.  For more information about the festival:  http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/attractions/event/traditionalevents/a32_fes_yamakasa.html.

We stayed in the rest of the evening and watched movies.  The next morning, we checked out at 10am but our appointment to pick up our visas wasn't until 1:30pm.  So we hung out at the mall across the street from the Korean Consulate.  It was pouring down rain.  After we picked up our passports, we needed to find another hotel to stay in that night.  We went to 3 hotels (in the pouring rain) before we found one with a vacancy.  It rained the rest of the night so we just stayed in the room watching Japanese television.

We woke up early the next morning to catch the ferry back to Busan.  When we got to Busan, we went to the train station where we needed to buy tickets back to Iksan.  This has never happened to us before, but apparently there are no trains (transfers or otherwise) from Busan to Iksan.  The lady at the ticket window explained that we would take a train to one station.  Get off the train and get in a taxi to travel about 20 minutes to another train station.  We would get on the train at that station and end in Iksan.  What a hassle!  But, we finally made it back to Iksan.

Even though there were some snags during those 4 days, I really enjoyed the time away.  We went to Japan but didn't do any sightseeing and spent more money than we were expecting to.  Oh well!  It was a pretty great experience just for a visa run!  And with me being the type of person who freaks out if there are no plans, no hotels booked, etc., I really had a great time!