While studying Japanese, one needs a nice place to rest, recharge and do homework. GenkiJACS provides accommodation as well. It is optional, but it made everything much easier for me. I picked a private apartment, because for six months study it was only 53,000 JPY per month and I needed my own space for work.

There are of course other options available and you can read about them on GenkiJACS website. From other schoolmates experience, I can say that homestay can be both good and bad. The website claims 40 mins from school on average, but you can end up an hour bus ride far as well. But of course you have the option to speak Japanese every day with the family. Note that host family is sometimes just one person.

Dorm is good for people who like to hangout with other foreigners and I would definitely pick it for shorter stay. I only know one person who stayed in shared apartment. The upside was that it was in the same building as the school. The downside - it was noisy, small and of course you have no say in who will live with you.

My apartment is quite small, but it has everything I need. It came with everything including TV, wi-fi, table, chair, bed, fridge, fully equipped kitchenette and also washing machine, hair dryer, iron and vacuum cleaner. It is a wooden floor type apartment with a bed and a tiny Japanese style bathroom. You can see the main room on the picture.

It is however not 5-10 mins walk from the school as the website claims, but rather a 40 mins brisk walk. There's also no direct bus nor subway and I ended up buying a bike. It takes me about 15 minutes to reach the school with it. At first it looked like a nuisance, but in the end I am glad I was forced to buy the bike. Fukuoka is very bicycle friendly.

The location itself is very nice though. Quiet at night but has plenty of bars, restaurants and services nearby. It's only about 2 mins from subway and bus station. There's a konbini (7/11) at the bus stop and a post office and a big gym are also nearby. A bit further, but still just 10 mins walk is a 24h supermarket with better prices than the konbini.

Because I like running, I am quite happy with the 2km distance to the great runners friendly park Ohori koen.

I met the agent who takes are of the apartment when I came to Fukuoka and in about 10 minutes I was already living in my new home. He also takes care of all the bills and I must say I am very happy in this place now.

If you plan a trip to Japan and your itinerary says Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, you are missing a lot of beautiful places that are well worth visiting. Here's a list of my six favourite places I have visited and are missed by majority of tourists and travellers alike.

When I first read throught the whole GenkiJACS page, I really liked two things: The instant estimate that was quite close to the final price and the chat with GenkiJACS representative. I had all the information I needed before I even asked them for the final price.

I wanted to go to Fukuoka because it seemed like a nice city. It has a small beach and the weather is nice, if you don't mind a short rainy period and hot summer. Fukuoka's rainy period looks like Central European spring, but it's a bit warmer. And since I spent 4 years in Malaysia, hot&humid is what I am used to as well. The city is just the right size to have everything and not feel crowded at the same time.
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People are a bit friendlier here and not as busy as in other Japanese big cities. There are also a lot of families with young children. If you've only visited Tokyo or Osaka with a trip to Kyoto, you will be very surprised.

The school is located in a nice district, close to the centre. If you arrive at the school during a lesson, it will feel quiet. Which happened to me when I went to take the orientation test. But during the breaks, you realize how busy the school actually is...

At the entrance there's a shoe rack and you have to change to slippers. Just by looking at the number of shoes gives you a good idea how many students study there. The receptionists are very friendly and if you came for the first time, they will help you get around.

GenkiJACS has a big lounge and it's gonna be the first room you'll see. You can eat there and socialize with the other students. Since you can't eat in classrooms, so this room gets full during lunch break :) It's easy to start conversation with other students, because most of them have similar interests... And they all study Japanese :)

The classrooms are small, designed for a maximum of 6 students. It happened to me that we had 7 students in the classroom, but some of the original classmates left after a few weeks and our class has only 4 people now. It's an ideal number where everyone gets time to speak. And it was actually fine to have more people in the class in the beginning, because there wasn't much talking. I've become a good friend with my classmates in the first few days and it always felt sad when classmates finished their studies and left...

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It's been now ten weeks since I joined the school. It's the first half of my study with GenkiJACS and I am going to resume studying after a three weeks holiday that I really need right now :) But I can say that afte 10 weeks studying Japanese I am able to communicate with locals when I initiate the conversation and it feels great!

Mt. Aso or Aso-san (阿蘇山) is one of the largest volcanoes in the world and it is the largest active in Japan. It's located in Kumamoto prefecture on the Kyushu island and it's one of the biggest attractions of Kyushu.

Mt. Aso is more an area than just a mountain. What is usually called Mt. Aso now consists of five major peaks. Mt. Naka or Naka-dake in Japanese is the currently active one. I was lucky to be taken to Mt. Aso by friends by a car, which looked like by far the easiest way. There is a parking lot just next to the main crater. Bus tours usually end at the base of a cable car which is used to get to the volcanic rim. It is closed when the volcanic activity raises.

My first visit to Japan happened in 2007. I was a student back themequipped with only a very bad digital 2MPix camera and I did not know much about travelling. It was my first big trip on my own.

I did experience a culture shock when I first arrived to Japan, but I experienced another one when I came back. Japan is really different from any other country. The language barrier can be a problem, but everything else works so smoothly in Japan, I got used to it quickly and then I missed all the little things back in Europe.

In Japan everything is convenient (especially if you understand Japanese) and people who offer any kind of service are always trying to do their best to give the best service possible. Sometimes I was surprised how they already expected what I wanted. Even with zero Japanese I was still able to get around just fine.

During my first visit I got my share of a good food, history&culture and weird Japan. One of the weirdest experiences was a visit to a parasitology museum in Meguro, Tokyo which I happily revisited during my other visits as well.

Boryeong Mud Festival that takes place every summer in Korea is definitely worth a visit. The mud in the region is said to have healing properties. And it's true, because having fun is good for you and you will have a lot of fun there. The next festival is happening between 18th July 2014 and 27th July 2014.

Boryeong (보령시) is a city on the west coast of Korea. The festival is located in Daecheon (대천동), which is a small township near the city center. Getting to Boryeong is very easy, there's a train from Seoul all the way there (Yongsan station, approx two and half hours).

When you get to Boryeong, you need to take a bus to Daecheon. It stops at the train station. Remember to say: "Beach-e", when you want to go to the beach. That's how you pronounce beach in Korea ;)

I visited the festival in 2011 and it was simply awesome. Everything was mud and mud is fun. Mud slides, pools, showers. There were plenty of games that will hep you make friends very quickly. Some of the games ended up in a mud lynch.I quickly learned that the most important thing when you lose is to cover you ears!

I've been to the festival twice the same year. Both days were equally fun. Most of the visitors were young Koreans and travellers. Some other travellers a I met said it was not as much fun during the weekend. I guess it gets a bit crowded (with sexy people though :)). I also made a lot of new friends, even though there were some funny misunderstandings between us, because they did not really speak English and I of course speak zero Korean. One moment totally cracked me up, when one of the guys offered me to go on a slide with his girlfriend by saying: "Do you want to enjoy with her?"

Here's some more info about the festival:

• http://www.mudfestival.or.kr/english/festival/festival1.php
• http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_2_1.jsp?cid=697135
• http://www.boryeongmudfestival.com/

The cost of travelling can be divided into four groups: transportation, accommodation, food and other expenses. I've been always able to cut the cost of my travels to minimum by paying nothing for accommodation and it is certainly possible to save on the other three as well.

Free accommodation?

While people usually try to save by going to cheaper hotel or hostel, it's possible to pay absolutely nothing. Today I received my new couchsurfing.org (CS) postcard. CS is one of the social network and its target audience are travellers. There's more than just CS in the same category, but I have been using CS the longest. The oldest is probably hospitalityclub.org and one of the newest ones is bewelcome.org.

 The postcard is just a proof that I live where I claim to live ;)

In all these networks you are able to find friends that will host you at their homes. By visiting meetings and being a good guest and host yourself, you become more trustworthy, increasing your chances of finding a host or friends.

Living a place instead of just visiting

People all around the world like to meet travellers and show them around (for many reasons... :)). I've seen the world from a different perspective. I like to travel to a destination and live there instead of being just a tourist. And the traveller social networks certainly enable me to do so. When I am lucky the locals invite me to their homes and their lives and that's more valuable to me than just sightseeing. They say that the best things in life are free. I don't agree, because nothing is really free. The saying should read: "The best things in life can't be bought." and I'd agree with that one. Travelling on tight budget gave me more than I could ever buy.