3/22/08 First Hours in Korea

Tung, Clarence, and I stepped off the bus from the airport around 7pm on Thursday. Thus starts my time in Seoul, the capital city of Korea.

While I didn't get a good look at the airport due to all the rushing around, I had read earlier that it was pretty futuristic, and I managed to get a quick shot of a nice looking part.

Ooh, spaceshippy

Of course, going to a new country, we had to exchange our currency into Korean won. One dollar equals about 1,000 won, and the highest bill's denomination is 10,000 won. So when the three of us exchanged our money together, we got a couple fat stacks of cash, some of them still bearing the official wrap thing from the bank. I was having fun with the weight of all the paper in my pocket, and I played around with it a bit once we found the hotel.






By the time we found our hotel and got settled, it was pretty late in the night, so we had a limited number of entertainment options for our first night in Korea. We wandered a bit with the help of a map and some half-baked directions from the hotel's front desk.

One of the best parts of being someplace new is that you can be completely lost in the middle of nowhere and its still tons of fun. The newness of everything is awesome.

Eventually we found the Dongdaemun gate, with the huge Dongdaemun market close by. Despite probably being at least 10 o'clock already, it was still well populated with buyers and sellers alike. It was an interesting clash of cultures. There were four or five tall malls, decked out in flashing lights and filled to the brim with clothing of all types. Between the malls on both sides of the streets, then, was packed with little tables and tents offering the usual street market stuff. There was lots of clothes of questionable quality sporting counterfeit labels, interesting little food stalls, and piles of copied CDs and DVDs. I don't think I bought anything, but the time was definitely worth it.

Dongdaemun Gate


Clarence and Tung examining the merchandise


A small but well decorated storefront.

Along the way we had our first meal. Despite our total lack of language ability and complete lostness, we did pretty well. We picked a place that was well populated and stepped in.

Mmm, fried chicken


The meal started how they since often have, with a bowl or two of free little snacks. This time we got some kind of crunchy and light-tasting pickled vegetable and a bowl of crispy rice puffs. They are superior to the Japanese variety in three ways. They always taste good, they are free, and if we finish a bowl another quickly replaces it.


The chicken was sweet and spicy. It was a refreshing change, as there doesn't seem to be much spicy food available where I live.


The beer was way cheaper than in Japan and came in comically large amounts.

Online gaming is huge in Korea, and its presence is obvious. Internet cafes advertising games are a common sight from the street.



As further evidence of the massive popularity of online gaming, at multiple points throughout the day we have been able to view a TV channel that follows competitive Starcraft(a PC game released in 1998) games play by play. A shout out to my friend Sam, who somehow already new that this channel was available.

3/19/08 I'm Going to Korea!!!

It is official, I am going to Korea. Not only am I going, but I'm going soon. Let's say, tomorrow. The kids will all be gone for spring break, and teachers need breaks too. It's funny, shopping around for plane tickets and hotel rooms didn't have me too excited. So many high dollar numbers and comparative shopping really takes the energy out of me. When I received my Lonely Planet guide and language books, though, the trip became much more real.

Buying the books from Amazon.jp was an interesting little transaction. Rather than put the purchase on my American credit card, I checked a box saying that I would like to pay at the convenience store. Amazon emailed me a code number, I took the number to the nearby 7-11, paid in cash, and by the time I got back home I had a confirmation email thanking me for my purchase. Doesn't get much easier than that. I quickly devoured the guide book cover to cover, learning all sorts of things about the city of Seoul (wikipedia) where we will be spending the majority of our time.



View Larger Map


The one excursion that we have planned at the moment is a day trip to Panmunjeom (wikipedia), a small town located on the line between North and South Korea, the most heavily armed border in the world.

Soo.... Check back as I will be updating with lots of travel stories, Korean technology gods willing. Until then, toodles.

3/18/08 Spring is Here, Why Not Eat Some Whale?

The weather has been warm enough that I could venture outside jacketless the last couple days. Spring is still having some hot again/cold again mood swings, but anything is better than the frigid, windy Ashikaga winter. Since the third year students have graduated and so are off of my work schedule, things have been a whole lot less stressful. It's funny, with a third of my kids gone, I have about the same amount of classes to teach as the English teachers at the other schools. So this is what it must be like, I can actually chat with the other teachers, plan a lesson, or clean my desk. Yesterday I even had enough energy to play outside with the kids after my lessons were finished.

Well I have been taking advantage of the warmth and I have had a pretty eventful few days. Not being cold all the time has really brightened my mood. Where to start?

Its only been about a week since the Sea Shepherd conservation group finished hounding the Japanese whaling fleet all over the pacific (article here). It was quite an action filled expedition. At one point two of the whale lovers boarded a Japanese whaling ship, were captured, and were held for two days before being released. The conservationists hurled a barrage of foul smelling rotten butter and other unpleasantries onto the deck of the whaling ships, allegedly earning one of them a slug in his bullet proof vest.

I read about the saga online as it unfolded, interested more because it involved Japan than because I have a strong passion for sea mammals. I saw several pictures of the incidents on the newspapers randomly strewn on coworkers' desks, and I slipped it into a conversation with one of the more advanced English speaking teachers to see how he felt about it. He seemed a bit bewildered about why so many western countries are so rabid about protecting whales. We talked a bit about it, and I'll share the opinion that I have developed. I think that the whales should be protected from extinction, but that they can be hunted responsibly just like any other animals. If whales became as numerous as deer are in Illinois, than it seems that hunting them is acceptable.

Well, I felt like after all the reading and discussion, that I was still missing a vital piece of information. Sure, its easy for someone to say "stop whaling because its wrong, and who eats that stuff anyway?" Its easy to preach to people to stop a practice that you don't fully understand in the first place. So I mentioned that I might like to try whale meat, as its not available in the US, and I probably would not have another chance. My teachers (due to our canned-sardine proximity, what starts off as a two person conversation often turns into a group discussion) were either impressed or amused, and a couple of them even tried to find a place in town where I could satisfy my curiosity. They eventually gave up, saying that I should just go to Tokyo to try some.

Fast forward to the end of last week, when one of the younger teachers proudly declared that he had found a place in town that serves whale, and that he could take me there. Awesome. The funny part was after all of the searching, the restaurant ended up being not 5 minutes from my house, in a little sushi bar that I had already been to once before(I wrote a bit about it and you can relive the memories here). He handed me the little newspaper clipping where he had discovered the place, and I gathered that the whale on the menu was Minke, which I checked online to make sure it isn't endangered or anything (its not).

So me and four other younger Japanese teachers all went out to this place to partake. Maybe half the of them hadn't had whale before either, so we were all in this together. First thing, first, though. Often when you sit down at a place that serves food as well as alcohol, you will be presented with a small dish of food that you did not order and have no choice but to pay for(I believe the word for it is otoshi). I think its purpose is to make a little extra money off of people who may have no intention of ordering food but take up valuable space all the same.

Well, as you can imagine, over the past half year quite an assortment of foul tasting things have been set in front of me. Having already payed for the thing as soon as it hits the table, I usually try to force myself to eat it regardless. Sometimes its a little salad, a strong tasting pickled vegetable, unidentified meat, whatever. In one special instance, at El Mundo (picture here), the table food was a few slices of raw horse meat. Not bad. This time, though, it was an entire skinned fish (minus the head and those damned eyes, mercifully). It had been marinated in a sauce and ended up being quite tasty. We learned later on that the mystery fish was fugu, or poison puffer fish (poison organs removed, I assumed/hoped). This anticlimactic discovery was hilarious to me, as I have been wanting to try fugu for years.

So after our poison fish appetizer and some salads it was whale time. The first dish was whale sashimi, which pretty much involved little raw chunks of the meat in a bowl. My first impression was that the meat was fairly similar to beef only with a small hint of fishiness, but I've never sat and eaten a raw steak so its possible that I just have nothing to reference. The veins of fat in the meat were few, but if I did hit one, chewing through it took some doing.

Whale sashimi


It feels like a bad joke is in order. How about... It was a whale of a time.

Next came the breaded and fried whale pieces. I enjoyed them much more than the first incarnation, as the preparation was a bit closer to what I am accustomed.

It looks safe enough, doesn't it?

We had a third plate that was also quite delicious. This one was in the same little cutlets, but it came unbreaded and cooked more like a traditional beef steak. It looked enough like steak that I didn't even bother to take a picture.

Here's one last picture of a non-whale dish. This was a bit like mashed potatoes, wrapped in a bit of seaweed paper and then deep fried. A good combination of crunchy and creamy.

I guess I was surprised at how much I liked the whale and how fairly normal it was. I had envisioned something like a big pile of steaming blubber and a spoon to eat it with. So there you have it, my first and most likely only whale encounter.

3/14/08 Rockabilly Disaster

Saturday morning I experienced a small earthquake (tiny news blurb here). It was one of the largest ones so far, I think, but still little more than a curiosity. The building's vibrations were accompanied by the sound produced by everything in the apartment jiggling at the same time. Perhaps more like a giant massage than an earthquake. Occasionally I will wake up in the middle of the night due to a pronounced swaying of my bed beneath me. The earthquakes have been mild enough that I don't yet have any reason to fear them. Surely we can be friends.

*******

Saturday night a few of us decided that the time was right to hit the BBC Club. A typical clubby dance music establishment, an important feature of BBC (no idea what the letters stands for) is that it is the only club in town. The two story establishment usually has a couple of DJs going in different rooms at the same time, and we enjoy the atmosphere. Thing is, there are so many unwanted events at the place that getting there on a nice normal day is really a spin of the roulette wheel. Its nice to mix things up, but we show up expecting a certain experience and are sometimes disappointed. The exterior of the building is plastered with publicity posters featuring the varied talent that will appearing in upcoming days. No doubt, the fully literate find the signage quite useful. We, however, are a very dense bunch.

We paid at the door and entered in the usual fashion. The price was a bit higher than usual, which really should be starting to serve as a warning to me to start running and not look back. I had spoken to Rory from England on the cell not five minutes prior, and he had assured me that there were plenty of interesting people present. When I finished ascending the stairs, it became painfully obvious that Rory had left out some small but crucial details. Yes, these were people, and as promised, there were quite a few of them. The particular folks had a few interesting qualities worth mentioning, however. They were predominately middle aged men. They wore a variety of leather jackets and various out-of-place retro suits. Last but not least, they had slicked back pompadours, reminiscent of Grease or an early Elvis album cover. I was confused and scared and angry. Mostly angry. The four of us had just dropped enough cash at the door to purchase a Nintendo DS, and hours of wholesome electronic fun this was not.

Not even these guys could ruin my day so easily, as I was determined to enjoy my night. As we all descended the stair case, I braced myself, not knowing what sort of brain-stinging spectacle I may be about to witness.

There was a live band playing various old school tunes. I gathered from the sayings on people's t-shirts that this was a rockabilly concert, rockabilly being an early style of rock popular in the 50s. The dance floor was quite densely packed, more than I ever seen. Predominantly the same crowd with the funny hair, there was also a woman or two carrying a child, as well as some elementary school aged kids running around. The adult time that I had been hoping for was pretty thoroughly not going to happen.




A small circular clearing had formed in the crowd where some especially devoted looking men had gathered. They waved their arms and legs around in a frantic Elvis sort of dance. It was entertaining to watch, if not completely spastic. One person couldn't keep it up for long, so he would retreat back to the circle and another would quickly take his place in the center. They were serious to the point that just about every single member's shoes were wrapped in black electrical tape, I assume because they had all danced their shoes to tatters. They were interesting to the point that my eyes were fixed on them rather than the band for most of the show. My only criticism of these guys was the lack of improvisation. They just kept doing the same few little steps over and over without much flair.

A leaflet that I snagged on the way out, advertising the show.

I was determined to get my money out of the experience, so I stayed until the band was finished. While I'm not a big fan of the genre, I have to admit that the guys had energy. One guy playing a cello (?, I'm not a large stringed instruments expert) raised it to his hip to play it like a guitar, revealing the bright red and orange flames painted all over it.

After the show, when the crowds started to thin out, I noticed that there were some tables with CDs and t-shirts that the bands were selling. One shirt was funny enough that I picked one up. It has a skull with crossed swords on the front, and across the chest it reads "rockabilly samurai" and "far east rebels rule". The back has several things going on, the best being the Japanese flag emblazoned directly next to the confederate flag, in an unholy and confusing alliance that I'm sure is the first of its kind.

After the show was finished, this pompadoured DJ started up, playing strange hip hop versions of the 50s music we were listening to previously. This was my signal to leave.

3/9/08 Day of 1,000 Bows

The past several days at school have been devoted to the third grader's graduation ceremony. Many school days have been completely chopped in half, with the students all going to the gym to practice the ceremony after lunch. I witnessed the quite solemn and very serious way that everything was going to go down. You see, not only the soon graduating students were practicing, but nearly every human in the building came to go over their parts.

Every practice day was the same. One classroom at a time, the students would pick their chairs up and carry them with them towards the gym. A large group of teachers stood at the entrance to the building, examining the uniforms of the students. One of the more common infractions seemed to be the length of girls' skirts, but I imagine that is an issue everywhere people wear skirts. The big one, though, was hair.

'"Psychologically speaking hair symbolizes power," says Dr. Miyamoto, "and at the same time it is an expression of one's thoughts, emotions and conflicts. . . . As you may recognize, through hair, the educational system demands that students share the illusion that all Japanese are the same."' Another little quote from Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan, an interesting book that I will most likely continue to mention here and there. I don't know the exact guidelines, but the main infraction involved some of the students' outlandish hairstyles, as well as hair coloring. I found the color thing amusing. Everyone's hair is more or less the same hue, so you can easily spot a student thats out of line from a block away. It seemed like a hopeless rebellion on the part of the kids.

The teachers were enforcing the rules with a fervor that reminded me of airport security, or perhaps the entryway to a particularly fight-prone dance club. Before I entered, I spread my legs and raised my arms, waiting for an imaginary metal detector wand. No one found that particularly funny.

One of the most practiced parts of the routine was the various movements required. Everyone had to stand up at the same time, bow at the exact same time.... if you simply started at the same time but bowed at your own pace, you were in danger of coming back up at the wrong instant, ruining the "we are a bowing machine" effect. The bow itself was therefore broken into three or four steps, and a note was played on the piano as a signal to move to the next stage of back bentness. The whole thing was like a really forced version of "The Wave" at a particularly uneventful baseball game.

The receiving of the diplomas itself was especially forced. One was required to bow to the teacher's section, then proceed up to the stage. Bow to the principle and vice-principle, and yell a loud "Hai!" when one's own name was read. They then reached out and grabbed the large certificates, first with the left then right hands, arms fully outstretched. With yet another bow, they walked down the stairs and placed the paper they had just received in a large box. After another bow to the dignitary section on the opposite side of the room, they returned to their seats with hands straight down at their sides. A misstep in one of these many actions caused a teacher to run over and offer words of advice on the spot.

*******

Well on Friday, the big day finally arrived. The teachers' room was a beehive, with everyone running around and talking a bit more tensely than normal. The students who had ignored the past week's warnings about hair were brought in one by one. First a couple of the teachers had lengthy talks with them, most definitely unpleasant ones. Several got on the spot haircuts which were probably purposefully done as awfully as possible.

All the women that were 3 grade homeroom teachers, and so would be in the actual procession, were wearing kimono, which was pretty cool. Everyone else, though was dressed up nicely but not notably so. As I had already seen the exact ceremony several times at practice, it wasn't particularly exciting. Several important people got up and gave 10 minute long speeches, and then it was over. No joyous cheer at the end, either... simply another solemn procession out the door.

Afterwards, all of the parents and teachers made a long line from the doors to the school all the way to the front gate of the grounds. We clapped and said "omedeto" to the students, congratulating them for their three years of hard work. I did the obligatory picture taking and yearbook signing with several of the students, and then it was over.

*******

All the junior high schools in town had graduation on the same day, and we all got off work a bit early due to the festivities. Not wanting to waste such a lovely gift, we hopped on a train to Kiryu, a closely neighboring city. Its nice because there is plenty of action within walking distance of the train station, which is merciful because we have to shed our bikes in order to take the train.

One of the highlights was an Indian restaurant we had dinner in. I got a curry set, which came with this massive piece of naan, a soft bread.

I think that I will start to take more pictures of the restaurants, as they are one of my main joys in this country. Stay tuned.