I personally try to be prepared for almost everything since I hate sudden surprises. Well not every surprise tends to be bad but when it comes to traveling I think it won't hurt to do some preparations in advance, especially when you travel abroad.

This time I teached myself how to read and write Hangeul (the korean alphabet) before the trip and what should I say? It's really easy to learn and it helped us a lot since Koreans tend to write english words in Hangeul as well. This way we were able to read some menu cards or street signs without asking native speakers.
Locals don't expect you to be an expert in their language but knowing how to say "thanks", "hello" or "sorry" will always be appreciated and helps to make conversations much easier. However, Koreans and Japanese are very friendly to foreigners and try their best to help you out whenever you ask for it.

I also tried to download maps in Google for the trip but neither my friend nor I could save maps from South Korea or Japan on our mobile phone. This was a bit annoying since offline maps would have helped us so much during the trip. Thanks god Google Maps worked nonetheless most of the time but at least in Japan it might be difficult to use it every once in a while, because WiFi there sucks big times! ROAR!

I've made a list of things and places I'd like to see before the trip but we didn't make any use of it. We found it easier and better to act on impulse and used tripadvisor for spontaneous suggestions.

Also, these following Apps were really helpful during the trip. "EUR x JPY" and "EUR x KRW" are currency converter that might be very useful during shopping or at a restaurant. "Tokyo Subway Navigation", "Metro Busan Subway" and "Metro Seoul Subway" are apps that help you to navigate through the jungle of these busy cities. The best thing is that they work online AND offline and come with a full metro map. We used these a lot!

We had some turbulences on board on our way to Seoul. I didn't find it THAT bad but my dad said there must have been a small article in the newspaper about it. Weird. However, we arrived safely in Seoul around 1PM Korean time and thanks to the really nice bus driver, we found our hotel earlier than we had expected. Like I said before, Koreans are very friendly to foreigners and love to help out. Same goes for Japanese people, by the way.

This year we choosed hotels instead of hostels and I would do the same again in future. It's more comfortable to have your own private room and bathroom. I personally didn't like the atmosphere of hostels last year and were quite happy with the cheap hotels we've booked for this trip. The one in Seoul was Hotel Cozy in Myeongdong. The location was absolutely perfect and the room was small but clean and fair. One tiny drawback was the shower. It was really small and once you took a shower you flooded the whole bathroom but all in all Hotel Cozy was absolutely sufficient.

Steps: 11.674