good times in Korea

My friend and I had initially decided to go to Hong Kong and Korea for our winterbreak, but the Hong Kong part didn't work out so it turned out to be a 12 day trip to Korea.  My friend Ryan has friends over there so we already had some contacts and some hosts.  They picked us up from the airport and showed us a pretty good time.  Seems like about all we did was go out, hit those Korean restaurants where you grill your own meat at the table, and yes, partake a bit of the infamous Korean soju.  Or however it's spelled. 

We also saw a couple of movies while we were there.  First we saw The Day the Earth Stood Still with Ryan's friend Jeiho, and then Ryan and I saw Yes Man on our own.  Both were great distractions.  I tend to get lost in movies, forgetting my surroundings or circumstances.  I never noticed this until I saw some movies in Japan, and was surprised to find myself in a foreign country after the movies were over.  Kind of like waking up in a hotel and not knowing where you are. 

As far as touristy stuff, Ryan and I took a Seoul City tour, which consisted of some palace, which looked basically like all of the palaces in Japan.  I'm sure there are significant differences to the trained eye.  Plus we went to a couple of famous open markets that I'm told are very exciting and significant.  But the coup de grace was the Amethyst Center, where all of these saleswomen try to guilt trip you into buying amethyst jewelry.  One of them told Ryan "that woman over there already bought 3 pieces.  Why don't you buy some?"  I'm paraphrasing but that's about what went down.  While looking at different tours to take, we noticed that almost all of them either went to the amethyst center or the ginseng center.  Fantastic. 

The other big thing we did, which we had been looking forward to was going to see the de-militarized zone that separates North and South Korea.  We could get tours only at 8am, so we missed the first attempt.  Ryan told me it was up to me to get us up and all that, so we slept in of course.  The next time we redoubled our efforts, though I was hoping we could just go back to sleep and not worry about it.  Anyway, we took a two hour bus ride up there and first saw the Freedom Bridge.  This is some bridge that Koreans yelled "hooray, freedom!" on as they crossed it coming south.  Then we went to check out the museum and tunnel that the Northies dug to try to capture Seoul.  After that we went to an observatory where you could see North Korea's closest city.  I can't remember what it's called but I have a few pics of it.  It was pretty cool.  One of the South Korean soldiers busted me taking video of it. Apparently there was a line that you had to stand behind while taking pictures.

And then on our way home, we stopped off at the....anyone?  Anyone?  The Amethyst Center!  Hooray, amethysts!  Losers. 

We spent Christmas and New Year's there, but both were pretty uneventful.  Actually I can't remember Christmas Day because it was just another day, and I couldn't get anyone to kiss me on New Year's.

As far as adventures in the hotel, Ryan decided to boil some water, but put the electric water pot on the stove and melted black plastic all over the stove top.  The room filled with smoke, so I opened the window and the door out into the hotel.  I guess it was pretty bad, because someone on the floor called the front desk and they came up to check out what was going on.  Turns out it was our next door neighbor, who happened to be the owner of the hotel.  Good times.

From what I could tell, Korea seems to be more like the US than Japan.  They really don't mind littering at all, they've got better teeth, seem more rude, but also more friendly, so the excessive politeness isn't there.  It was kind of refreshing.  Also they sell Welch's Grape sode everywhere!  That was friggin' fantastic.  And Quizno's is making quite a go of it there, but we didn't get a chance to eat there.  We did eat at T.G.I.Friday's and Bennigan's though.  Both were pretty good. 

Since I've been to only Japan in Asia, I can't help comparing the two, but what's really weird was leaving Korea and coming back to Japan, instead of the US.  It was my first time to go home to a foreign country.  The relief was there, and the little bit of familiarity and all of that, but it's Japan, not the US.  That's a weird feeling. 

Digging for Buried Treasure

So like I said last time, this one's all about activities of the nose. 
 
I can't really remember whether or not I picked my nose in elementry school.  I guess I probably did, based on what I've seen here.  It's a free for all.  I'll be watching the cutest little girl and she'll start in digging.  Not just the casual pick or two, but really going after it, clearly making her way around the perimeter of the nostril, and then moving to the next.  What does she do with them you ask?  She eats them of course.  There is no handier snack.  I remember eating mine only once, and being pretty unimpressed. 
 
I'm thinking, "that's elementry school, it's probably natural, I probably did it back then" etc etc. 
 
Well, I find myself at one of my middle schools, watching an eighth grader go to town.  Pick, eat, savor.  Pick, eat, savor.  I spend most of the classes day dreaming anyway, so I just start watching her, but she spots me.  So what happens next?  Does she turn red from embarassment?  No.  Does she wait til after class to commence snacking?  Nope.  Instead, knowing that I'm watching her, she tries to do it covert like, sneaking her treasures undetected.  By God, I guess if a girl wants to pick her nose, I'm not going to be able to stop her. 

I'll try to fire one off about our trip to Korea here pretty soon.  Happy New Year everyone.

One from Japan

I've been in J-Land for about two months now.  I kind of put off starting the old blog up, and then it kind of added up, so I put it off some more, because there was so much to write about.  etc etc.  Anyway, I'm writing this stuff as I think of it, so bear with me.
 
As far as the first days or whatever, I remember thinking that if I could make it out of Houston on schedule and without incident, I'd be doing great.  I figured the Houston bus station would be a jungle, but it was about the same as the Shreveport station, not bad at all.  I remember being really pissed about my hotel in Houston though, because they were remodeling part of it, the sign outside didn't match what had been on hotels.com, and the breakfast there was crap.  I was going to write a scathing report, not so much about the hotel, but about hotels.com for not being up to date and all that, but I didn't have a computer for about 5 weeks, and now I don't care so much.  I don't know.  I might get around to it.
 
The flights over here were really long, obviously.  They showed some movies; Leather Heads and Speed Racer are the only ones I can remember.  I was glad to watch Leather Heads, but when Speed Racer came on, I told myself there was no way I was watching that crap.  Thirty minutes later, I had the headphones on and was on the joyride of my life.  Not really, but it was better than staring at the back of the seat in front of me. 

I landed in Tokyo, and was met by some JET folks.  There were four other teachers, a couple from the same flight and a couple from some others, I think.  It's kind of the same phenomenon as if we were prisoners of war.  We had no idea who each other were, but we stuck together like the best of friends, making sure the others were up in time for breakfast and all that.  Then we all headed to the train station and went our separate ways.
 
It was only about 2.5 hours from Tokyo to my stop on the Shinkansen, called Fukuyama.  Two or three guys met me at the station...I guess it was three, two japanese and one american guy.  They talked to each other in Japanese and I just kind of stood there and sweated.  It was friggin hot.  It seems like sweating was about all I did after I first got here. 
 
The two Japanese guys took me to the Board of Education for Fuchu City.  That's technically who I work for, as opposed to JET or the schools where I teach.  I teach at 4 different schools, but one is an elementry school and junior high combined, so technically that's five.  I was in jeans and a t-shirt when I got to the BOE, so I had to change for my big welcoming ceremony.  The whole thing was ridiculous and surreal.  They asked me to give a speech, none of which any of the people could understand.  Then I went into the office of the president of the BOE and there was a very short ceremony where I was presented with my contract and all that. 
 
Then I was off on my brand new (very old) bike to my apartment.  The place is pretty small but it's cool. 
 
My supervisor's name is Okawa Yukio.  Okawa is his family name; they put that first.  Anyway, Okawa translates into "big river" and Yukio translates into either "snowman" or "happy man".  Snowman is way cooler so I kind of disregard the happy man translation.  The other teachers and I are trying to figure out if we can call him Snowman to his face.  I did it once and he kind of flinched, but smiled.  That, and we're pretending he's a cocaine dealer. 

My city is pretty small.  Supposedly they annexed another community to maintain the population: about 45000.  I figure it's probably dying.  Not that it'll disappear but all the young folks are moving to other, nearby cities.  Anyway, there are plenty of little rice plots around the city, and they've been burning them off since I got here, so you can usually smell smoke somewhere. 
 
Being a really small city, I guess there isn't much news round these parts, so I and all of the other teachers before me were invited to meet with the mayor of the city.  I thought the whole thing was ridiculous.  I wasn't sure what I was doing there, but one of the Japanese English teachers from one of my schools came with me to translate and we had a pretty nice chat.  There were two newspapers there and two or three photographers.  Supposedly, I was on the news on tv too, but I didn't see it.  I had a big smile on my face the whole time because I thought the situation was funny/crazy.  It was my first brush with celebrity.

I do have big news of sorts:  I've finally fallen in love.  Her name is Miho, and she's a darling.  I met her at one of the schools where I teach, and I always look forward to seeing her.  She's seven years old, and she likes cats and ice cream.  That's about all I know so far.  I tried to take a picture of her twice, but she ran away both times.  I'll see if I can catch her off-guard some day. 
 
I had one pretty surreal day one time.  I went to an elementry school for the first or the second time, and was invited to watch the special needs class.  This elementry only has about 50 students spread out over 6 grades, so the special needs class is only two students.  They started with some stretching exercises and then I somehow got roped into playing the big bad wolf from the Three Little Pigs story.  So much for gaijin stereotypes.  It was really weird.  I didn't really "throw myself into the role" like you may have imagined. 
 
Anyway, when I went back to the train station to pick up my bike, I saw a guy knock over one bike, and then they started dominoing...like ten fell over, and then they paused.  He kind of froze and wasn't sure what to do.  But then they started falling again.  I would've paid $5 to make that happen, but that entertainment was free my friends.  I did ask him if he needed help, but he just gave me the "what the" face so I moved on.  That was an awesome day. 
 
As far as the "weird crap I had to eat" topic goes, I've got a couple of new entries.  One day at school, I noticed that we were eating some kind of pickled vegetable salad/slaw.  The main ingredient seemed to be daikon, which they translate into radish, but I don't think it's radish.  Anyway, I started looking a little closer and noticed some little black specks in the slaw.  I looked a little closer and noticed that all of the black specks were really round, and that the slaw seemed to shimmer a little bit. 
 
And then it hit me.
 
About half of what I thought was just the regular salad was little tiny fish about an inch and a half long.  The black specks were their little bulging eyes.  They give me lunch for free at 3 out of the 5 schools that I teach at, so I just about always eat what I'm given.  I had it again since then, and ate it all both times.  Can you imagine picking something out of your teeth like 4 ours later, and it's a little fish eye?  Yummy. 
 
Entry two under "weird crap that I had to eat" begins as follows.  My friend and I were at a restaurant sitting at the counter right in front of the big food case that had food and stuff in it.  We noticed some organs sitting in there.  They looked like kidneys or something.  We started asking people what they were, and after about 5 minutes, and with the help of my friend's dictionary, we figured out that they were Cod ovaries.  Yummy.  My friend started to ask a question about them, like how do they taste or something fairly harmless like that, but I shut him up.  That's a sure way to get offered something for free.  Bleh.
 
Well, the next day we went to a place with some hors d'ouevres, like a little thing of spinach and some chicken.  I'm eating the chicken, but then I notice that it doesn't feel like chicken, nor does it taste like chicken, so we ask what it is.  Now keep in mind, this was the first time we'd gone to this place and it was the next day. 
 
Cod ovaries.  Go figure. 
 
I had originally told JET that I wasn't interested in teaching elementry, but I think I'm starting to like them more, because the kids are so much more responsive.  I don't know how many times I've seen kids cry over a game with no prize, or show absolute glee over singing a song.  It's easy to get them geeked up, and it's impossible for them to hide their emotions.  It's a lot of fun when they're having a good time. 
 
We were going to play a game today with some middle school students, when I decided to designate two team captains so they could pick their teams themselves.  About half way through being done the teacher said it was taking too much time, and that maybe it wasn't a good idea.  It was too late though; they had already started.  Honestly, I just wanted to see what would happen out of morbid curiosity.  I wanted to see if the last picked would cry or what.  Nothing happened though.  They handled it like champs and we had a good time. 
 
There's a game where you get the students to line up...maybe 3 or 4 lines.  The kids at the head of each line have to raise their hand the fastest when a question is asked.  If he can answer it correctly, he goes to sit down to the side.  The losers go to the back of their lines.  The team that runs out of people first is the winner.  We usually stop the game when one of the teams runs out, but I REALLY want to keep playing until it gets down to one student.  I guess I'm mean, but that sounds awesome.  Unless it's a student that I really like.  The teachers probably wouldn't let me anyway.
 
Oh, odd fact.  I've played that game probably, 12 times I think, and 9 of those times the team closest to the door won.  What's even crazier is that the teams closest to the door had won like 9 out of the first ten times I'd played it.  Not sure what's going on there. 

That's about all for now, friends.  Stay tuned for the next entry all about booger picking and eating!!!

The Highlights

Well, I thought about waiting a few more months and making my posts an annual thing, but I had some extra time.  Plus I'm forgetting my experiences from Japan on a daily basis.  Anyway, I've been back in the US since late January.  Presently I'm bumming in Virginia and catching up with my mom.  I think I'll be heading back to Swepote next week...probably. 

As for highlights from Japan, while I can still remember:

The beef bowl from Yoshinoya

Living on my own

Staying up late with my British roommate, talking about Star Wars or whatever else. 

The cheese croquets from the 280Y bar

Going to the onsen and bathing with like 50 naked dudes (the first 30 seconds were the hardest).

The hamburger meal from First Kitchen.  It was a double bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg and potato salad on it.  Plus they had barbeque seasoned fries. 

Having a social life that rivaled the one I had in college, namely my friendship with Kiku, Dan and Rebecca.

Walking on the beach at Amano Hashidate on my birthday.

Going to Hiroshima with Kiku and learning a bit more about that occurence.

Hanging out with Aki in the little neighborhood pub.

Not vomiting all over my friends while eating raw shrimp, squid and boiled octopus.

Singing karaoke with back-up dancers on each side Christmas Eve night, and yelling "meddy kudissmasu!" at japanese people.  They'd say it back too.  That was pretty sweet. 

I should have a few more pics up in the coming weeks if you look on my myspace page.  I'll probably think of some more stuff right after I post this up. peace yo

Long time, yet again.  I can't really remember what I used to write about in this blog.  And I had a little trouble remembering my login and ID, but I made it through.  Just for an update, the 9 month mark is only days away.  I had my birthday last week, and I must say, had a great one.  A bunch of us got together and went out to eat at my favorite place.  It's the best Indian food I've ever had.  After that I went on a bit of a hike with my friend Megumi and we watched a waterfall for a while.  The next day I took a trip on my own to go check out Amano Hashidate, "one of Japan's 3 most scenic sites."  It was a great trip, only 2 days and one night.  I spent most of the time strolling along the beach.  The weather was basically perfect and it was nice to get out of the city for some nature type scenery. 

I'm doing my best to cross my goals off the list, but I've got a long way to go.  Hopefully I can knock out the big ones in 3 months' time.  Just for some cultural experiences I've had recently...I was at a restaurant with my friends one day when they asked me, "do you need rice?" as in, do you need to eat rice along with what you ordered.  This is one of the oddest things I've been asked since I've got over here, besides "massagie?"  The word for rice is gohon, the same word for "meal".  It also happens to be the name of Goku's son haha. 

One morning I was talking to a student who was sick with a sore throat.  She was drinking green tea, so I told her that maybe it wasn't good for her, since it has a lot of caffeine in it, and would dry her throat out.  She promptly told me that it kills bacteria, and although it may have caffeine in it, it wouldn't dry her throat out like...other types of caffeine.  Because it's Japanese apparently.  When the emperor's new grandbaby was about to be born, everybody got pretty exicted because it was pretty much the last chance for them to have a male heir.  Some people were hoping for a boy, to carry on the line and the "purity" but some were hoping for a girl, which would hopefully bring about some changes in thinking.  It ended up being a boy.  My friend explained to me that it was important for the emperor to be a boy because the Y chromosome was the only way for them to know that the baby had the emperial line's blood, and not his mother's.  Because she obviously sucks.  It's amazing that they would take science, twist it around a bit, and then use it to justify a completely outmoded tradition.  The emperor should have been hanged for war crimes anyway. 

To update my list of weird things eaten...I ate shellfish or clams...I don't know which.  I didn't like it though.  When I went for the hike and the waterfall, Megumi bought some battered and deep fried maple leaves.  Yes, real maple leaves that had been fried.  They were crunchy from the fried batter, but also a little bit sweet.  Pretty good really. 

One last thing, I've got new pics up on my Myspace account.  If you don't have myspace...well, I guess you don't get to see them.  peace yo