Stories beyond borders

 Over 2 months in Japan and I have a brief idea of this country, so full of surprises. It has started really well, the day of my 30th birthday we took a cruise from Busan to Fukuoka, business class! I even got a birthday card together with my ferry ticket! We were guided to our super comfortable seats and handed a pair of slippers and a big box of goodies. I didn't realise at that time how symbolic these gifts were. The first thing I saw, when entering our compartment were vending machines - hot and cold drinks (free and unlimited!) and... ice-cream. Another Japanese symbol, as I would find out later on.  3 hours on the ferry flew by - we tried most drinks from the machine, got ice-cream and even got a souvenir picture at the deck with my birthday date. And so we finally stepped on Japanese land! And the stop was... a covey belt sushi restaurant. I was happy as a little kid, watching my sushi plates arriving, accompanied by happy music. Surprisingly, there were many vegetarian sush

 Just before going to South Korea we watched a short documentary about "health obsession" among koreans. We were impressed how public health sector encourage people to eat healthy and exercise in a very organised and methodic manner, focusing especially on older people. Apparently, Hyundai even created its own catering factory to ensure that employees would get a healthy, balanced meal every day, and went further, offering their meals for further distribution. So we got this image of Korea being a mekka of healthy food and healthy people. In fact, they are a population with the second highest longevity in the world, right behind Japan, and of course aspiring to become the first. I was really curious to see how this looks like in every day life of Koreans, what they put on their plates and what habits they have. It started pretty well - on our 1,5 hours flight from China, we got a really nice, warm lunch - definitely much better than what we ate in Chinese Airlines. They took