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°2026.08.13.Thu | Asia (Korea and Japan)

train

We are back from our trips to Daejeon, Tokyo, and Seoul. It’s been decades since I’ve been to Japan (in 1998 and 2001), and fourteen years since our trip to Seoul, about which I posted on korean food and Koreans. Some quick thoughts from 2026:

  1. It was exceptionally hot and muggy; fortunately, our time in Tokyo and Seoul was a bit cooler than when in Daejeon.
  2. We often escaped the heat via museums. Korea has excellent and inexpensive museums in both cities.
  3. South Korea was not vegetarian friendly, especially Daejeon.
  4. In Japan, we took a day trip from where we were staying in Hatagaya to hike some of Mitake Gorge, well worth it!
  5. At the Bic Camera superstore I purchased a set of Kowa 6x30 porro binoculars—Bic was also the only place we could find fine tweezers with which to remove a tick from our hike.
    • Porro prisms are hard to find in the US, but I prefer them. And the Kowa’s have eyeglass-friendly 20 mm eye relief. (I gave my old 7x35 binos, that I purchased from Kmart when I was in high school, to friends. They too were made in Japan and of surprising quality.)

BTW: Most of my current photography is HDR, which is now visible in my gallery thanks to this sigal plugin. Such images should show nicely on HDR devices and even as embedded here.