Korea has a three day holiday period from Mon Oct 1 - Wed Oct 3 for the Korean thanksgiving. This is the busiest holiday travel period as families return to their parents home and ancestral roots to pay homage to dead relatives. Fortunately for foreigners, this gives us a five day holiday with the weekend. I was toying with possible scenarios for this period. It is advisable to book several months ahead as most travel options sell out fast leaving more expensive prices or sold out seats. Technically the Chuseok holiday falls this year on Sat/Sun/Mon. Unlike other countries, if a holiday falls on a weekend you dont get the next weekday off. Fortunately Wed is another public holiday so many places are including Tues/Wed as part of the Chuseok holiday break. As I was changing schools I wasnt sure what holidays I would be given. I also have four carry over summer vacation days from the old school. I then found out the thurs/fri before chuseok were mid term exams with no classes. Excitedly I thought I could book those two days off for a 7 day holiday stretch. However, the new school told me the exam dates were not final and may be moved so they advised not to book anything for the thurs/fri. For a long time I had been hoping to goto Uzbekistan and the 7 day stretch would have been perfect in nice late September weather. However, it was going to be too last minute as to whether I could get the two extra days off or not while airfares to Tashkent had gone up about $500 from when I first started looking. Instead I decided to use the safer option of just using the five day chuseok holiday and storing my carry over vacation days for a longer winter break. However now when I switched back to plans for Japan I was having problems finding travel arrangements. Ideally I'd like to leave school friday night and catch a plane or ferry. Unfortunately it seems they dont have evening flights from nearby Busan which would have been ideal or any flights were sold out. The cheaper Plan B was the ferry. Navigating the ferry website was quite tricky as it is all in korean despite an option for english. http://www.kobee.co.kr/main/main.aspx When I figured out ferry times it appears the last one is 3pm so I cant take a friday night ferry and would have to go Saturday morning. I muddled thru the site in korean myself and picked an early morning Sat ferry returning Wed afternoon. The site didnt ask me for payment which I thought was strange. A teacher read the reservation and said I have to transfer the money to the bank account number on the confirmation. I didnt feel comfortable doing that as I wanted more reassurance I had a seat on a busy travel period. At the new school we checked the site again. This time a teacher told me the reservation I had made was not confirmed and that I was 'waitlisted' which is why it didnt charge me. After trying to figure out the site again we found another time that was still open and able to book. I had to take an 11.30am ferry, which I didnt want as its 3 hours plus time to clear customs/immigration on both ends, which would end up getting me in Japan late Sat afternoon wasting most of the day. Coming home I wanted a late Wed ferry but they were all sold out and I could only get an early morning ferry again cutting my trip short on the last day. However since these were the only seats remaining I had no choice if I wanted to travel by boat during chuseok. Paying was a whole other nightmare. I had a teacher stay with me while we had to install popup options to get us thru all the payment screens. Paying online on korean sites always has this problem. Now I had my ferry tickets booked I had to book my train tickets to get me to the Busan port one hour away. Next problem, all train tickets had been put on hold for the busy holiday period. There were no messages on the english train site and it just kept showing no trains listed for the selected day. Someone posted on the facebook that they were being sold from 7am-8am on two days. I woke up especially early to try this but it still kept saying no trains. I managed to call the english line in the evening to ask about this. I'm not sure what the early morning sales were for but she said my block would go on sale online and in person from 2pm the next day. I had class the next day that ended at 2.15 so I was worried the tickets may sell out when they all go live online. After class I quickly checked and all the trains and seats were available for outbound. However, now when I tried to pay it kept rejecting due to 'high volume' and for me to try back later. I had my ferry tickets booked but would I even be able to get to the port? After about 10 minutes of waiting and trying again the payment managed to go thru. So I had my tickets booked to the port, could I get tickets coming back? The trains and seats were available, and again after a couple of tries the transaction went thru. Finally I had all my travel arrangements booked to get me to and from the port in Japan and ferry seats. After a week or so I decided to check the ferry site again to see the waitlisted seats as we got closer to the chuseok holiday. Surprisingly the 8.00am ferry was now open while I had already booked an 11.30 departure. I got a teacher to call the ferry company and I was able to switch my booking to the 8am departure. Now I have four more hours in Japan on my arrival day! I'm hoping to change my return to a later ferry from my 8am booking but am doubtful the afternoon ferries will open up this close. Also hoping for no bad weather that will cancel or delay the ferries. The extended forecast seems fine as of now.