visa running - Osaka and Kyoto

The Osaka visa run is literally a rite of passage for Korea's English teachers. Like most countries, Korea won't issue a work visa from within the country, so you have to leave to get it. And Osaka seems to have the optimal Korean Consulate due to its promiximity and efficiency.
Most teachers do this in a single day, leaving Seoul-Incheon airport at 10a and returning at 9p, but this seemed like a wasted opportunity to me. Thus I arranged with my school director to go on a Friday and stay until Sunday evening. As this involved no extra costs for the school and my director's a good guy, he agreed and set it up.
I'd read online that time is of the essence so I'd changed plenty of money in Korea and bolted for the Rapi't train as soon as I got thru Japanese Customs which was, suprisingly, much slower than Korea's.
After filling out the forms, paying the fee and handing everything to the bureaucutie for processing, we had a couple of hours to kill while waiting for her to process our applications. Preferring to fly solo, I set off alone toward Osaka's ultra-hip Amerika-mura district, which lived up to its reputation handily. Although Korea's women are prettier, the Japanese are way hipper than Koreans.
While wandering thru Amerika-mura I walked into a hat shop, where a blonde and brunette had just walked in. (Can you really blame me for yielding to my twin weaknesses for hats and gaijin-bootie?) I said hello to them, konichiwa to the proprietor, and proceeded to check out the selection (of hats, that is). Trying on an overpriced fedora, I flashed a smile to the brunette who said to her friend in Russian, "check him out." If I'd had a skill of cunning subterfuge I'd have feigned ignorance and kept smiling, but instead I started speaking Russian to them. They were quite pleased by this, and we spent the next hour or so wandering around Amerika-mura until it was time for them to return to the town where they live and work in a bar. I still had another hour to kill, so I kept exploring, though my red messenger bag, packed for a long weekend, was begining to weigh me down.
Promptly at 4p I picked up my visa, chatted a bit with the assembled English teachers, and headed for the nearest subway en route to Kyoto. Much though I enjoyed the hip modernity of Osaka and would have loved to have sampled its night-life, I wanted to catch the annual Jidai Matsuri festival held in Kyoto on October 22. However, my Lonely Planet guidebook to Japan, it seemed to have conflicting information on the time of the festival, and even its name changed between pages 95 and 348. (LP staff, are you paying attention?) In truth it turned out to be irrelevant, as I didn't get to Kyoto until about 7 and I heard from other travellers that the police had stopped letting people into the festival at 6. (I would've taken the bullet train if I could figure out how to do so.)
It was my hope to try out a capsule hotel while in Japan, so I wandered around Kyoto's downtown in search of one, sampling some udon and checking out the nightlife scene along the way. After a few hours of searching in vain my bag was begining to take its toll on my shoulders, back, and patience. So I gave up on my capsule plan and went to the Uno House hostel, which was a great place except for its ninja-proof floors. (Many palaces in Japan were built with paths and floors that were deliberately noisy to deter assassins. I can only speculate on why a hostel would have such a noisy floor system.)
Given that Kyoto's nightlife isn't its main attraction and that I missed the festival, in retrospect I think I should have sampled the nightlife in Osaka, slept in one of the numerous, easy-to-find capsule hotels there, and taken an early train into Kyoto. On the other hand, spending the night at Uno House I was invited to share sake with three Brits, and in the morning I was able to rent a bike from the hostel and get great advice from fellow travellers on how best to spend my limited remaining time (1.5 days) - something my guidebook snobbishly refused to do. (In their defense, nothing short of a week is sufficient. But a deadline's a deadline, and I had to teach on Monday.)
Outfitted with a smallish girls' 3-gear bicycle with weak brakes and a basket containing my guidebook, camera and a map annotated by my fellow hostellers, I set forth to explore Kyoto around 8:45a in hopes of catching some of the venues before the busloads of tourists arrived.
I got to eastern Kyoto's Ginkaku-ji ("Silver Pavillion") just as it opened, as did a busload of Europeans and gaggles of teenaged Japanese schoolchildren in uniform. Nonetheless it was well worth the visit and admission charge (¥500). Although they never actually got around to silverplating the building, the hillside garden was lovely and provided breathtaking views of Kyoto.
After stopping near the hostel to check email and grab a bite at an internet cafe, I set off to central Kyoto to see Nijō-jō, the shogun's Kyoto palace (a home away from home). Although the throngs of tourists were annoying, it too was well worth the time and admission charge (¥600).
Next I wanted to see the views and mountain shrines of Arashiyama in western Kyoto, so I started pedaling. I got pretty close to it, but was trapped in what looked to be a bizarre tour-bus accident where no-one was injured but several busloads of Japanese were walking around and shopping in an area with no visible attractions. Unable to cut through this crowd with my bicycle, I consumed a tasty potato-pancake treat and turned back, as time was ticking and all the Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples and palaces close at 5p. On the way I stumbled upon a shrine which, near as I could tell, is devoted to entertainers and performers. I payed ¥10 for a fortune from a machine which, translated at the hostel by a Japanese girl who studies in Hawaii, said that I'm unlucky in that my talents aren't being fully used. (Quite true, but I'm loving my life at the moment.)
I dropped by the hostel for a moment, got my bearings and set off to the traditional Gion district to check out the gardens of Kennin-ji, which were lovely. I managed to wander into a temple's grounds into something that looked like a cemetery with lovely stonework. Apparently I wasn't supposed to be there, and a gardener asked me to leave with the characteristic Japanese politeness that let me know to leave without making me feel unwelcome. Perhaps this is a remnant from a time when everyone was armed and graceousness was a survival skill.
Now that the attractions were closed and I'd bicycled at least 20 miles, I felt it was time to relax in a Japanese bathhouse. The guidebook recommended the excellent Funaoka Onsen, which I found with the help of a drunk old man who seemed very eager to help me with directions and have me sample some nasty anchovy-like fish he had in connection with the recent typhoon. (It was hard to tell their exact origin thru his pidgeon English and my pidgeon Japanese.) On the way to the bathhouse I sampled some more street-vendor food, getting six six pieces of squid in waffle-balls for the bargain price of ¥200, and some entertainment from the husband-and-wife vendor team while I waited for my meal to cook.
The bath was the perfect way to unwind from Friday's pack-muling and Saturday's bicycling.
Returning to the hostel I met several cool travellers from various places including a delightful Indonesian lady named Irma with whom I went out to Gion to search for geisha and mochi. We had such a magical evening taking pictures, admiring the 17c architecture and finally spotting a geisha that I didn't even mind our failure to find mochi. After a cab-ride back to the hostel which saved us consider exposure to a cold night, we went out for donburi around the corner with a Swiss fellow and a Japanese gal.
Awaking early again, I felt pressured to make the most of my remaining time on Sunday as my 7p flight loomed large in my mind. After my Swiss friend, Omar, gave me the 411 regarding getting to the airport I jumped aboard my bike and set off Kinkaku-ji ("Golden Pavillion") which, unlike the so-called Silver Pavillion, really is covered in gold leaf. On the way I rode through Kyoto Goshu ("Imperial Park") and managed to check out the hillside gardens of Daisen-in and Daitoku-ji, where I stumbled upon an acoustic music festival and heard some bruegrass. I even managed to find mochi, which were disappointlingly similar to Korean ddeok, unlike my recollections from eating mochi in the USA before I'd ever tried ddeok.
Cycling back to the hostel to return my bike and collect my bag, I felt disappointed to be leaving, but resolved to return in the spring for another weekend or two.
I said sayonara to Mr. Uno and the staff, and promptly took the wrong bus to Kyoto station. The bus took me to the station, but in the slowest way possible. Fortunately I'd left plenty of time to explore the controversial architecture of the station, which I wasn't able to do as I arrived with barely enough time to buy a ticket for the airport-bound haruka train and sprint to its track.
I napped as we zipped toward Kansai Internation Airport (KIX) and then made my way to the gate as quickly as possible, as I was very, very late. However, Japanese efficiency got me there with 15 minutes to spare in the duty free stores where I bought nothing.
Getting off the plane with my messenger bag and a shopping bag filled with candy for my students and co-teachers, I met a Korean singer named Kim Jong Hoon and his entourage, returning from Japan. Although he doesn't look it, I initially thought he was Japanese because he was far too fashionably dressed for a Korean. I also bumped into Joe, a teacher I'd met on Friday at the Consulate - the only one who seemed to have spent the weekend in Japan. Kim Jong Hoon offered us a ride back to Seoul with him, his manager, a beautiful young model, and their driver/bodyguard who was taller than me - quite amazing in Korea! Joe speaks far more Korean than I do, as he's been here for 2 years serving in the army, working as an army contractor, and now teaching English. This helped our conversation on the way back. Mr. Kim even gave us autographed copies of his CD of gospel recordings. (Unfortunately, his other CD of pop songs didn't work in the van's player.)
After they dropped us off near my house Joe and I had some beers at a local hof, the Korean term for a beer-bar, where we discovered that we have a common acquaintance in the US.
And then I slept...

Parting Thoughts
Here are some observations on Osaka, Kyoto and Japan. As I find it difficult to resist the temptation to compare Japan to Korea, I'll indulge in it towards the end of this overlong missive.
Kyoto seems to blend its identities as a modern metropolis and historic gem as though they belong together, like the natural and artificial blend of its gardens. Being there made me feel poetic, and everytime I was in a garden I'd hear birds chirping making it hard to believe that I was in a city with nearly twice the population of San Francisco (1.4m).
I'd like to give props to the USA for Kyoto's continued existence. We could have leveled it in WWII, as we did with Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. But we didn't because it had no military significance and plenty of cultural/historical value. Apparently it was on the short-list of targets for Fat Man and Little Boy, but thankfully someone at the DoD knew enough about Japan to strike it from that list.
As Kyto's in the same timezone as Seoul, I had no jetlag or timezone issues. Instead I had currency conversion issues. Korean Won (KRW, ￦) are approximatly 1000 to the US dollar (USD, $) and Japanese Yen (JPY, ¥) are about 100 to the dollar. This makes Japanese prices easy to decipher: just treat everything as though it's labelled in pennies. The problem is that I'm so used to dividing by a thousand that I had to remind myself that everything is ten times more costly than I initially thought.
Similarly, shifting from my minimal Korean language skills to my infinitessimal Japanese was confusing. Upon arrival I had to keep myself from saying things in Korean as has become my habit,and upon return I had to suppress my newfound habit of saying things in Japanese.
While the Japanese lived up to what I'd heard of their unfailing politeness, one point on which the Nipponese didn't meet my expectation was formality. Without sacrificing anything in terms of etiquette, they don't seem to hold foreigners to any unusual rules except removing shoes indoors. Certainly there's quite a bit of ceremony in the geisha culture of Kyoto's Gion district, but it's not overbearing.
Exceedingly hip and modern, the youth of Japan seem to be on the cutting edge of fashion. If their current trends are exported, expect to see women wearing leg-warmers and 1960s' bouffant hairdos a la The B-52s. I also got to see an example of geek-chic taken to its pinnacle in a Kyoto fast-food joint that seemed to be the pre-party spot for young Japanese.
If it weren't for the exorbitant cost of living in Japan, I might think I should have done my teaching in Kyoto. But it appears that there are few if any such jobs to be had there, and the one I did find pays no more than what Korean jobs pay. Which would make it hard to get by in Japan, while it leaves me with a surplus in Korea.
Appendix: Comparing and Contrasting Korea and Japan
I arrived in Japan with a bit of the Korean resentment for their history of aggressive imperialism and a feeling that just about everything that Americans think of as Japanese is just as much Korean, but the Japanese branded it first. While this certainly proved true with sushi, mochi, the game of Go, blood-type superstitions, horizontal smileys, and many other things, the Japanese do have a monopoly on their gardens, tea ceremonies, geisha, futons and tatami mats. It's unclear to me how similar Shinto's animistic beliefs are to Korea's animism or how similar Korea and Japan's various Buddhist sects are.
Unlike Koreans who avoid eye contact with strangers - foreign or domestic - and look away if you catch them staring at you, the Japanese aren't particularly interested in stairing at gaijin. They openly look at us, sometimes making eye contact, and simply look away when they're done like westerners would.
Perhaps this is because Japan is more westernized and has had more westerners. (Unlikely, as the US has had a large military presence in both nations for about 50 years. And in Korea the US military is in the middle of Seoul, whereas in Japan it's mostly in Okinawa.) More likely this is because Korea is the most Confucian of all Asian nations, and Confucianism has no place for a relationship with strangers. This conflicts with my theory that Korea is as much an extended family as it is a country, but it's certainly the case.
Surprisingly, Japan has much less English signage than Korea. Both nations are quite commited to being international hubs of industry, but Korea's doing a better job of labeling things in the world's current lingua franca.
Japan is very bike-friendly, and both Osaka and Kyoto are filled with bicycles and bike-parking. Korea, on the other hand, seems bereft of bicycles. I rarely see bikes in Seoul.
While Osaka's back-streets are just as maze-like as Seoul's, cars don't drive thru them as often, and neither motorcycles nor scooters are ever seen on sidewalks.
Overall, I'd say that South Korean culture is in its version of the 1950s, perhaps because they only shook off their post-war military dictatorships less than 20 years ago. Japan, on the other hand, is a fully 21c society arguably more postmodern than the US or western Europe. Korea is still becoming, Japan is. Actually, given their recent economic stagnation, there's some danger that Japan has been, but recent indications suggest that growth is returning.

Seoul on fire

Today started early. I awoke spontaneously at 9a. Rather surprising as I didn't get to bed until 3a after a night of drinking and dancing with my co-worker John. (I don't know his Korean name.)

My plan was to go to an orientation for volunteers at a local orphanage if I awoke in time. And since the orientation was to start at 10:45a, I figured the time was right. So I got myself ready and set forth into the fine subway of Seoul. Alas, it took longer to get there than I expected. And since addresses in Korea are next to useless, I didn't actually know where the orphanage is. (Orientation consists of getting picked up from the subway station and shown the way to the orphanage, and showing up late meant the guide had left the subway.)

So I wandered the area near the orphanage, enjoying the brisk fall morning and checking out a new hood. Clearly poorer than most of the places I've been hanging out in, but just as crime-free. Seoul is amazingly safe. I say this not because I've lived in NYC, New Haven and Baltimore. Seoul is so safe it makes San Francisco look like the Bronx.

The other part of my plan for the day - apart from meeting up with Suzanne once her jetlag subsided - was to check out a Korean class at 4:30. Seeing that I had quite a bit of time to kill before the class and Suzanne was nowhere to be found, I decided to check out the used bookstores in Itaewon, the foreigner district, to find a guidebook for next weekend's visit to Osaka. (My employer's sending me there on Friday to pickup my work visa, and I asked for a return flight on Sunday night so I can check out Japan.)
Into the subway once more, I headed toward Itaewon. At the transfer station, a young black man came over and said, "Hi." There are so few foreigners outside of Itaewon that it's pretty common to greet each other in English. I returned the greeting and was asked, "parlez vous francais?" Mustering everything I recall from high school I replied, "un petit peu," and found a new companion. Not speaking any Korean or English, I get the impression Jix is starved for people to speak to, even if their French isn't much better than my students' rudimentary English.
(Speaking of high school French, I often find myself channeling Monsieur Morrison when teaching English. He was a much better instructor than I'd realized, as evidenced by my conversation this afternoon.)

When we arrived at the Itaewon station Jix and I stopped at the tourist information office to avail ourselves of the free internet connection. While Jix was reading email a friend of his came by to say hello. Their friendship seemed to be of the Ghost Dog variety as Jix speaks only French and his friend, a Liberian, speaks only American-style English. The three of us hung out for a while, but our third amigo had another plan so Jix and I bid him adieu and made our way to pickup the book. We then shot pool with some GIs and assorted expats. Jix had a strange notion of the rules, and my French wasn't quite up to the task of explaining them but we got through it and enjoyed ourselves until it was time to exchange contact info, say "au revoir" and head to my Korean class.

The class was nice, and the folks friendly. It was a bit difficult dealing with Korean after French, but it made me feel very cosmopolitan. (As though my ego needed a boost!)

As the class was over and I hadn't heard from Suzanne, I called up another colleague, Kelly (again, I don't recall her Korean name), and we went to see the fireworks.

Someone once told me that talking about music is light dancing about architecture. Well writing about fireworks is like painting about philosophy.
Though I'm certainly no connoiseur, this was the most impressive display of pyrotechnics I've ever seen. Not only did they have shapes in the sky - red hearts, of course - there were things I'd never seen before like strings of lights that changed color as they dropped and lights that seemed to float up rather than being shot. And, to top it off, we could see lovely reflections of the fireworks in the windows of the 63-building. (Seoul's tallest structure is 63 storeys tall. This may seem paltry to New Yorkers, but it's taller than San Francisco's Transamerica and BofA towers. And my bet is that Seoul will have a taller building than anything in New York by 2012.)
There was an intermission in the fireworks, which was a new experience for me. The pre-intermission crescendo was so loud that both Kelly and I entertained fears that Pyeongyang had broken the 1953 armistice.

After tea and a subway ride, I find myself at home at midnight doing laundry and blogging on a Saturday night.

Hong Kong Action

I decided to visit Hong Kong during the Korean Chusok holiday, 9/27-30.

I'm pleased to report that China's "One Country, Two Systems" has left Hong Kong vibrant and well-off.
I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that Hong Kong isn't as expensive as I'd expected. In fact, it's no more expensive than Seoul, which I've found to be cheaper than San Francisco or New York City.
Another pleasant surprise: I only encountered 5 people wearing face masks, not counting street cleaners.
I was also impressed at how clean and fast the MTR subway is, much like Seoul's. But here's a bonus: they print a map of the entire subway system in color on each ticket!

Arriving in Hong Kong around noon from an early morning flight for which I'd pulled an all-nighter, I spent a few hours checking out Kowloon and marveling at Hong Kong's mobile phone selection before crashing in my room at the hostel, figuring that whenever I woke up would be a good time to explore as Asia seems to be open 24/7.

As it turned out, I awoke a bit after 4a, and after making my morning toilet stepped out around 5 in the morning. After picking up a $1 breakfast of unidentified meat-on-a-stick from a
street vendor (at 5a, mind you!), I proceeded to walk the length of an almost Nathan Road. If you've never been to Hong Kong, you may not know that Nathan Road is notoriously crowded. But not at 5a, when its only strollers are club kids heading home, a few ladies offering massages, street vendors and weirdos like myself.

I got to the ferry around 5:45a, in time to watch the sunrise over Hong Kong and wait for it to open at 6:30a. When I tired of waiting I walked over to the famously luxurious
Peninsula Hotel and caught a nap in their lobby on the pretense that I was waiting for one of their guests to come down for breakfast.

I awoke in time to catch the second ferry of the day, and alighted in Hong Kong around 7a, whence I proceeded to take the tram up to "The Peak" to see the skyline. Alas, the skyline was enshrouded in what I, as a San Franciscan, took to be a morning mist. So I strolled around The
Peak waiting for the mist to subside and shops to open. I watched some older folks engage in Tai Qi and some Philipino women walking dogs and small white children. (The Peak is among the hoitiest of the toitiest of Hong Kong's residential neighborhoods, and thus has many servants.)

A coffeeshop opened before the sky had cleared, so I went inside to enjoy an overpriced mango joice, read The New York Times - what a treat! - and wait for the skies to give me a clearer view. Well, I managed to make it thru The Times as well as the International Herald before
noticing that the cafe had grown crowded - I was surrounded by what appeared to be the junior Junior League of Hong Kong, all British and pregnant - but the sky hadn't cleared up a bit. At this point I realized that it wasn't fog. It was Hong Kong's notorious pollution.

So I abandoned my comfy seat and proceeded to wander down the hill into the thick of Hong Kong's downtown, thru the none-too-impressive Zoo and Botanical Gardens. When I got down far enough I managed to find the fabled escalator, and took that back up a hundred yards or so before disembark to continue my meanderings and search for lunch.

Within a half-hour I found myself in front of a restaurant with nothing written in English and crowds of Chinese entering and leaving. This, I decided, must be a good Chinese restaurant. So I went inside and gestured that I would eat alone. This being a Dim Sum establishment,
however, all the tables were set for eight people. I was brought to a table where two reticent gentlemen were seated independently, and I sat opposite them. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the bowl of hot water in front of me, so I waited until a cart came by with something that
looked appetizing. Meanwhile, a couple was seated at the table, and I quickly mimicked them in rinsing my spoon, chopsticks and teacup in the bowl. (Phew!) The new fellow was friendly and spoke English well, so we got on and chatted throughout the meal while he gave me
suggestions of what to order. Afterwards he and his girlfriend even led me to their favorite bakery and bought me a dessert, against my attempts to buy them dessert.

After wandering some more I returned to my hostel to take a nap before coming back to the city to see the mid-autumn lantern festival in Victoria Park, which was packed and festive.

The following day was spent mostly in the Hong Kong Museum of History, which gave me some insight into how Hong Kong came to be as commercially obsessed as it was. (It turns out that it was nearly uninhabited when the British forced the Chinese to give it to them to use as a port for selling China opium.)

My last day was spent in Hong Kong's main park, riding the trams which are basically 2-storey streetcars, riding the length of the escalator, and visiting the Man Po temple which was unfortunately under renovations.

Then it was back to the airport for a red-eye flight to Seoul. I slept thru most of the flight, and got back to my apartment at 7a where I slept for a few more hours before to school to teach classes at 2:30p. Ah, the joys of an afternoon/evening work schedule.

All in all it was a good visit. The first - actually second - day was the best. I can't say HK is going to be on my list of favorite places. The heat, humidity and air pollution didn't enthuse me. And HK's lack of history - no older than San Francisco - and fixation on commerce didn't exactly overcome those disadvantages. But I'm glad I visited and got to see it.