South Korea and Japan 2025

This was a trip I originally planned to do in 2020, but, as you may recall, a pandemic came in the way. But in 2025 it was time to do it for real!

March 23rd I left home for the MVP Summit in Redmond, and after the conference I flew directly from Seattle to Seoul. I stayed in Korea for one week and half, and then I took the ferry from Busan to Fukuoka on Kyushu, the southernmost of the four big islands of Japan. After a round of Kyushu, I took the boat over to Shikoku, the smallest of the big four, before going over to Honshu, the main island. In total I was in in Japan for 3½ weeks.

It was my second visit to both countries. My first trip to South Korea was in 1999, when I did not own a camera. My first trip to Japan was in 2009, and you find pictures from that trip here. Thus, if you read this and think "You should have gone to...", the reason could be I went to that place on my previous trip. Largely, I went to places i had not visited before.

A long trip like this one results in heaps of photos, and in total there are almost 900 pictures here. Below you find 74 photos which serves as a summary of the trip. For this summary, I've selected the best photos from each place plus some of more generic nature about the two countries. To this comes 19 sub-pages for the various places I've visited. Some pictures appear both in the summary and the sub-pages, but many pictures are unique to the summary.

Seoul 1. Sunday Morning Inwangsan	2. Gyeongbokgung, Throne Room
3. Cheonggyecheon Promenade	4. View from Yeouido
5. Gangnam Style!	6. Bukhansan National Park
Mokpo 7. View by Dusk	Jeju 8. Three Holes in the Ground
9. Samseonghyeol	10. Jeongbang Waterfall
11. Mr & Mrs Teddybear	12. Walking Trail on Udo
13. Fish Dinner	Busan 14. Busan Station Square
15. Beomeosa	16. Crab Trying to Escape
17. Gamcheon Culture Village	General Korea and Japan 18. Security Alert
19. Shinkansen	20. Shinkansen II
21. Kyushu!	Nagasaki 22. 11:02
23. Brutalism Meets Gaudí	24. Model of Dejima
25. Sofuku-ji	Kumamoto 26. The Castle Moat
27. Suizenji-jojuen	28. Egret
Kagoshima 29. View over Sakurajima	30. Sengan-en
Kirishima National Park 31. Mountain View	32. Kirishima-jingu
Beppu 33. Takegawara onsen	Uwajima and around 34. Sadamisako Hanto
35. Uwajima Castle	36. Wisteria
37. Yodo Line	Around Nakamura 38. Shimanto River
39. Shimanto River II	40. Ashizuri Misaki
41. Kongofuku-ji	Japan in General 42. Shinto Temple
43. Praying Instructions	44. Public Toilet
Kotohira 45. The 1368 Steps	Takamatsu 46. Ritsurin-koen
47. Ritsurin-koen II	48. Rope bridge
Kobe 49. Constrasts in Kobe	Osaka 50. Osaka castle
51. Holy Animal	52. Billiken
Nara 53. Todai-Ji	54. Altar
55. View from a Hill	Kanazawa 56. Kenroku-en
57. Gyokusen-en	58. Ochaya Shima
Fuji 59. Mount Fuji	60. Kawaguchi-ko
Nikko 61. Shin-kyo	62. Kegon Falls
63. Tosho-gu	64. Detail from Taiyuin Reibyo
Kamakura 65. At Kencho-ji	66. Red Leaves
67. Daibutsu	68. Samuel Cocking Park
Tokyo 69. Ikebukuro	70. Kaminari-mon
71. Asakusa	72. Flower Hill in Rikugi-en
73. Green Birds	74. Shinjuku Goyen in the Rain