speaking of travel surprises

I’ve probably mentioned this before on this blog, but on my summer 2007 trip to Japan and South Korea, I found both Seoul and Tokyo to be not at all like I’d expected.

*Tokyo doesn’t really feel to me like a huge city. It feels like about 6 or 7 medium-sized cities connected by rail infrastructure. It’s all spread out, and there was never really any particular place where I felt like: “This is the absolute center of Tokyo!”

*Seoul, by contrast, was more like what I was expecting Tokyo to be– everything jam-packed together, and with Blade Runner levels of neon in many places. I was actually quite taken with Seoul. First of all, it’s giganticism is made manageable by an incredibly fast and extensive subway system. I don’t know for a fact the answer to which world city has the fastest subway trains, but Seoul would be my top candidate for that award of the ones I’ve used. They’re all at least as fast as the New York A Train at full speed, it seems.

Seoul is so big that there’s a mountain, a literal mountain directly in the center of it! You can’t ever see what’s behind the mountain, of course, but it’s always another part of the city just as big as the one you’re in.

They also have a lovely river walk, not too unlike San Antonio’s, but less twisty and turny and more just a straight line away from downtown.

Finally, the Seoul metropolitan area is more immediately surrounded by natural beauty than any city that size I’ve ever seen. From the center of Seoul, you can literally walk to the huge national park that lies just outside the city limits on one side.

I don’t often hear Seoul praised as a great world city, but I had the distinct impression that it has the makings of one, if it’s not already there. There’s the “crazy neighbor” problem, of course, but if you forget about that then it has a lot going for it.