Lenny's Asian Adventure

Chinese catching up to the Japanese in zany entertainment

2007-01-18T05:59:00.000+08:00

Check out the Human Body Adventure.

Shanghai traffic video

2007-01-13T00:41:00.000+08:00

Not my own, though I made a similar one with my camera-phone.

It only takes 4 beers...

2006-09-21T05:52:00.000+08:00

... to make a Chinamen hug and bite a panda.

at least they only do it on T-shirts

2006-09-15T00:41:00.000+08:00

The NYTimes ran a story about the gibberish American's get tattooed in Chinese.
I really enjoyed the goofy Engrish that was on T-shirts in Korea and Japan, but I always thought they were wise to only put it on fabric that could be taken off and destroyed easily.
Ironically, it seems that we tattoo the same stuff that they write on T-shirts, like "power piglet."

going out with a bang

2006-08-29T05:35:00.000+08:00

Apparently New Orleans ain't got nothing on China when it comes to funerals!

the benefits of cheap labor

2006-08-09T06:42:00.000+08:00

Problems the Japanese tackle with technology the Chinese solve with manpower.

China is gaining on Korea

2006-06-22T00:45:00.000+08:00

...in terms of cheating ingenuity.

I knew it!

2006-01-10T00:11:00.000+08:00

It really is cat.

Actually, they eat cats in Guangdong, the place we usually can Canton in English. Mmmm... Cantonese Chicken. Hey, wait a minute!!!
I'm told they also eat rats there. And the brains of live monkeys.
Actually, the Chinese have a saying about Guangdong: if it's got legs and it's not a table, it's food.

Time to get out of this place. T-minus 2.5 days...

Cunning

2006-01-03T14:01:00.000+08:00

In Korean, the term for cheating (at least in the academic sense) is the transliterated English word "cunning" (거닝). I mention this b/c most of the words in Korean that are transliterated English are terms for stuff they didn't have until they encountered the west (e.g., chocolate, 초콜렛(?)). Maybe they have another name for cheating, but that's the one I learned.

When I was teaching Korean kids I noticed that seem to pay no heed to anti-cheating rules, though their culture has a huge respect for formal education. In fact, when I caught one of my top students blatantly plagiarizing and told my Korean co-teacher about it, his response was that cheating isn't taken that seriously in Korea. The truth is they're interested in the appearance of educational success, not knowledge.

Maybe now they'll take it seriously:

Hwang was the pride of Korea, along with kimchi and their World Cup Soccer team (whose better-than-expected performance in the 2002 tournament they co-hosted with Japan has been tainted by charges of ... cheating).

Very sad, as there are so many good things about South Korea.

The ugly Truth behind Xmas

2005-12-12T12:45:00.000+08:00

Ni-hao from Beijing

2005-09-29T04:20:00.000+08:00

Hello, it's me again. I know: I'm way behind on my travelogues.
But I just wanted to let you know that I've arrived safe-and-sound in Beijing and am staying at the Jade International Youth Hostel, which is quite nice.

Want to know what my trip looks like on the map so far? Here ya go! It's from a wonderful website called Great Circle Mapper.

Back in the (former) USSR

2005-08-13T00:12:00.000+08:00

First, on the way back from selling my phone and lunching with Henry in Itaewon, I bumped into some drunk Russians on the subway and had a friendly exchange in which I first deliberately pretended to not speak Russian to see if they could be convinced I was American, and then chatted with them in Russian to see if I could pass for a Russian. I think I succeeded on both counts.
The trip back took longer than anticipated though, and I missed the first available airport bus by a few minutes, so I didn't get to the airport until about 4:20p, only 1:20 before my flight was to depart. And the airport was a bit of a fiasco. First, b/c my ticket was on Korean Air but thru a Russian re-seller/cross-listing, they sent me to the wrong checkin counter. Or, rather, the nice folks at information sent me to the correct counter who didn't understand that's what she was and sent me to the wrong counter, from which I had to return.
OK, just one hour left and ... my luggage is overweight! No time to re-pack and put the extra heft into my carry-on - not even enough time to think straight and take the bigger bag as my carry-on. So that cost me about $225...
Now I need to exchange my Korean Won for Russian Rubles but the exchange places in the airport don't do Rubles. WTF? They virtually border the country (assuming you don't count North Korea as a separate country), tons of Russians work in Korea, what gives?!? OK, I'll deal with that when I get to Russia. Time to go thru security and customs, which went smoothly enough.
Next I just need to make good on my promise to call my folks from the airport with the card I'd bought over the weekend but ... it's having trouble. OK, after about 10 attempts and 5 minutes I get thru and I board the flight smoothly. Now I get to my seat, and it's a good deal: I've got the aisle seat of the center column and there's two empty seats between me and the gentlement at the other end of row. Sweet! But the baby in front of me is noisy. No, not noisy, incredibly noisy. Screaming. At the top of her lungs. My first instinct is to take out my trusty earplugs and relax but then I decide to be a Good Samaritan and help my fellow travelers. So, over the top of her mother's seat, I start cooing at the baby. Since I have a way with babies that far outpaces my way with babes, the child soon quiets down in her fascination with yours truly. And, in truly Korean fashion, her mother passes her over the seat and into my arms as we prepare for liftoff. So we hang out together until we reach cruising altitute and mom decides to reach around the seat and stuff a candy in her mouth, also handing me a wrapped sweet. And, a couple of minutes later, she again reaches around to give me at wet towel just as it's needed. Mothers' baby-senses are downright uncanny.
After a while the ajumma decides it's time to retrieve her munchkin, but she's returned again shortly. This happens a few times until I finally return her myself, pantomiming the need for a diaper change. After a few minutes without the kid, I turn my attention to the Wall Street Journal, Asia edition, and somewhere around page 3 ... a baby comes flying over onto the open but thankfully empty traytable beside me. Apparently the kid climbed over while her mom thought I was picking her up. No serious harm, just some screaming which, in all honesty, wasn't as bad as she sounded when I boarded. After this the child is not returned to me, even after I've apologized and explained the situation in my pidjin Korean which mom probably understood even before I'd said a word.
The rest of the time was spent reading The WSJ, The Economist, and watching Phantom of the Opera dubbed into Korean with Japanese subtitles, before I realized that I could just switch the audio channel and get the original English sound. But that was almost at the end. Did I ever tell you about the first time I "watched" Phantom of the Opera, about a month earlier? It was at a DVD bang (see previous entries) with my girlfriend, and we didn't really watch the movie, we just picked it because it was long and has a great soundtrack for making out. Now I've heard it once without seeing it and seen it once without hearing it. That sorta adds up, right?
Let's see, what else...? Oh, it was a Korean Air flight, cross-listed by Pulkova, the airline of St. Petersburg. And, since it was Korean Air they had a bunch of shrink-wrapped toothbrushes in the bathroom, with teeny-tiny little tubes of toothpaste. Koreans are very dedicated to oral hygiene. Almost all my co-workers kept toothbrushes at their desk and brushed after the tiniest snack.
They also had cologne and moisturizer in the bathroom. And it was the same brand that my lady had given me as a gift. Awwwww...
Oh, and they served us bibimbap on the plane, just as Doug had predicted! I miss bibimbap.
Russian border control at the airport was about the same as everywhere else, except that the lady examining my passport felt free to comment on how much weight I'd lost since it was issued (back in August of 2000). I briefly extolled the virtues of Korean cuisine and made my way to the baggage carousel. Once my bags arrived and I decided not to declare anything at customs, though I was carrying all my Korean savings in traveller's checks and a laptop, I stepped out to be greeted by Lenny, the brother of Elena who was my Russian teacher in Korea. Lenny and his fiancée Azella drove me to the apartmented I'd rented for my first few days in St. Petersburg on Stare (Old) Nevsky Prospekt, not far from the center of town which is (non-old) Nevsky Prospekt.
Oh, but first we had to go to an ATM machine because the currency exchanges at the airport were closed. And, of course, Lenny accompanied me to the bank-o-mat and warned me to be supercareful with my wallet in Russia. The utter lack of street crime is something I really miss about Korea.
The neat thing about being in Russia was that not only could I read all the signs as slowly as I did in Korea, but I could actually understand them here. In Korea all I understood were the signs that were transliterated English (e.g., "mee la ta eem" is "Miller Time"). This would take some getting used to. More on this later.
As I'd lost all sense of time by the change in timezone, I had to repeatedly remind myself that it was late in the evening because with St. Petersburg's White Nights it was impossible to tell that it was actually around midnight. As Lenny and Azella left I more-or-less forced myself to go to bed so I'd start adjusting to the timezone. Fortunately, I hadn't slept on the plane, so I was ready for bed around midnight.
The following morning I awoke at the ungodly hour of 5:45a and spent about an hour reading, grooming and unpacking. Then I ventured out into the wilds of Russia, rather nervous as I'd heard that it's an extremely dangerous country from my parents, western media, and Russian friends including Elena, Lenny, Azela and the landlady of the apartment. After a week or so I came to the conclusion that it's not much worse than NYC for the average person/tourist, but then again NYC ain't so safe...
For my first day I had a brief to-do list:

get a GSM chip for the phone I'd borrowed from Elena
get my visa registered at the hotel where Azella works
change my money

Well, the GSM chip was easy enough. I've now picked up GSM chips in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tallinn and Helsinki. GSM is really cool that way.
Finding Azella's hotel was reasonably easy as well, though it's one of those mini-hotels that occupy a large flat in the city center, not an entire building.
Changing money was a bit of a trick. Getting my leftover Yen changed was easy, as were my cash dollars, of course. But finding a place that would take my Amex Traveller's Checks wasn't so easy (finally found it at a big hotel) and no-one wants my Korean Won. Have I mentioned that these countries share a border?
And then I took a nap. Heck, if it's never gonna be dark, I figured I could sleep whenever I pleased.
I didn't do or see a lot in my first few days. In part, because I got a little bit sick probably just due to the climate change, and in part because I wasn't in a hurry to see everything immediately. I had a one month visa and I intended to use it. I'd only gotten the apartment for my first three nights, figuring that I'd pick out my longer-term housing solution once I arrived in Peter, as the locals call it. So on my 3rd day I re-packed my stuff, gave back the keys and set off for a hostel more centrally located. As hostels go, the St. Petersburg Traveller's Hostel isn't the friendliest place in terms of having a common area in which to engage with fellow travellers. But it's got a nice cafe run by a wonderful Uzbek fellow named Misha (Michael in English, Mullajon in Uzbek). A few days after moving into the hostel I was standing outside its doorway chatting with Misha while he smoked a cigarette and I wait for Lenny and Azella to drive up. When they arrived it turned out that Lenny and Misha knew each other from Lenny's college days, when Misha worked at a nearby bar that the students frequented. In Russian, the expression for "it's a small world" is мир тесен (mir tyecen).
Russia doesn't consider itself a part of Europe. Among other things, they have different fashions. Most things are fairly similar, but it's currently fashionable for women to wear clothes so transparent that you can see their undergarments or lack thereof, and men wear long-toed, pointy shoes (not quite as pointy as the current fashion in women's shoe).
After about 2 weeks in St. Petersburg, it felt like it was time to make a visit to Moscow. But that's a topic for another entry.

Пока (Bye),

Лёня (Lenny)

PS Jack says I was on TV. A show called GlobeTrekker did an episode in San Francisco and they showed the Spacewalk event in Fall of 1998. I had pretty interesting facial hair back then...

irony in Science

2005-08-04T03:47:00.000+08:00

The (South) Koreans have cloned a dog.
So they can have more of the tasty ones. (And they are tasty when done right.)

But I bet they were pissed to discover that their closest genetic relations are the Japanese.

Annyeong-hi kyeseyo

2005-07-04T16:06:00.000+08:00

Hello, and greetings from St. Petersburg, Russia, where I'm writing at an internet cafe on Nevsky Prospekt. Feel free to envy me.

Now that I've left Korea it's imperative that I commit my adventures to writing while they're still reasonable fresh in my mind. Hard to do, as I still haven't blogged the trip mom and I took to Japan at the start of April. I'll still leave that to another blog, as it really deserves its own entry.

While I left earlier than planned/anticipated, I feel like I left at just the right time. Not only because the weather was turning nasty, alternating between monsoon storms and overwhelming heat/humidity, but because I feel like I'd done it all and still had some appetite for more. Why, you may ask, is it good to leave while I still want more? "Always leave 'em wanting more." I want to retain fond memories of Korea and a desire to return someday, rather than feel fed up with the place. And I do, in fact, have fond memories and a desire to return someday. But not anytime soon. There's a great big world to explore.

So, what did I do that I can say I've done just about everything? Well, here's the list of the "checkboxes" that got filled.

I had a brief romance with a lovely young Korean lass, which was cut short by my departure. Again, leaving us both wanting more rather than fed up and finished.

I visited the ancient capitals of Gyeong-ju with Doug and Gong-ju with my lady. Gyeong-ju was more impressive, but perhaps that's because my lady and I weren't as interested in sightseeing as we were in each other. Doug and I were at Gyeong-ju on Buddha's birthday, and got to witness the slightly bizarre celebration at a very old temple. Let's just say that the solemnity of the occasion and the ancient grandeur of the setting didn't prevent them from putting on a gaudy show of cheesy Korean pop performed by B-list celebrities and kids from the local schools.

I had the experience of a "room salon", something between a brothel and a private karaoke room (Korea's ubiquitous song rooms, "norae bang") with an in-house escort service; the songs did not, however, have a "happy ending" as I was there for the cultural experience, which wasn't worth the price ($400 for me and a friend to have 2 lovely ladies join us in song and a bottle of scotch for 2 hours). Room salons, however, are a key aspect of Korean business social relations, and apparently it's rare for salarymen - and they are, invariably, men in a society which seems mired in the 50s and to have never heard of women's liberation - to go out for a business dinner without subquently visiting a bar and then a room salon where one might pay an addition $200 for one's client to spend some private time with one of the girls in a nearby love hotel.

Speaking of love hotels, I got to visit several of those with my lovely lady friend. In Konglish they're called "motels" as Koreans don't have motels in the American sense. They aren't particularly sleazy, and with the exception of a special love chair - which looked like an adjustable weightlifting bench - in the first one we visited, it'd be hard to distinguish them from very nice, modern hotel rooms. Except, of course, that the rooms are availabe in 2-4 hour increments (for just $20) or overnight (for $40-50). And in some establishments the counter is designed to prevent the customer and clerk from having to make eye contact, as embarassment is to be avoided at all costs in such a Confucian culture.

In preparation for a love hotel visit that never happened because we ended up having a fight, I dined on dogmeat with my friend-and-teacher John and two ladies from his church. I thought I was just going to eat it to have the experience, but it was absolutely DELICIOUS! Koreans generally eat it in a soup called bo shin tang which means something like "improve health soup." Like much of their cuisine, Koreans believe the eating dog improves one's health, especially "stamina" which I gather is their translation of the euphemism for virility.
I've been told that when it's not prepared well dogmeat has a pungent odor - and Doug can attest to this having eating homemade bo shin tang - but the meat we had - both steamed and in the soup - smelled and tasked mostly like excellent beef. Kind of flaky, almost like pre-chipped chipped beef, and very tender. It's considered to be an expensive dish and the place we ate it seemed upscale, but I think the check came to only $20 per person. I'm unsure because one of the church ladies generously insisted on paying.

I also got to experience a "DVD bang" (private room for watching movies). At one point I wanted to write a blog entitled "Bang bang bang" to describe the various types of "bang" ("room") which are available in Korea: norae (song) bang, DVD bang, jjim jil (steam) bang, and board game cafes. Why so many private rooms and whatnot? Like it's neighbor, Japan, Korea is very space-constrained. Occupying the bottom half of the peninsula jutting from northeast Asia on the border of China and Russia and pointing southeast toward the islands of Japan, South Korean has 1/4 the area of than California. And 1.5 times the population. While we're at it, about 25% of that population lives in Seoul. And another 25% lives in the suburbs of Seoul. So 50% of Korea's population is the Seoul Metropolitan area.
As such, there's not a lot of room for everyone, and most people live with their parents until they're married. In small apartments. Entertaining in one's home is unusual. In fact, the only time I've ever been in a Korean's home was my friend-and-teacher John's parents' home. Needless to say, I was extraordinarily flattered by the invitation. Anyway, the point is that since people don't entertain in their homes and young people live with their parents they need non-domestic venues for socializing. Hence the plethora of restaurants - a bit surprising when I arrived given the scarcity of Korean restaurants in the US - and "bangs".
Where were we? Ah, yes, the DVD bang...
So DVD bangs exist, ostensibly, for folks to be able to watch a movie together. Ostensibly. Realistically, they exist as a lower-priced love hotel where young people can make out for the duration of a movie. Which, of course, is exactly what we did. We picked Phantom of the Opera because of its soundtrack as neither of us harbored any delusions about actually watching the film. A good time was had.

So I can reasonably say that I've done just about everything one should do on a long-term visit to Korea. What didn't I do? Well, there is a short-list:
. a Buddhist temple-stay like Suzanne's; I may yet do one in China this fall
. eat beonteggi, the foul-smelling silkworm larvae that are sold all around town by street vendors with little carts
. eat nagji, the still-live octopus meat which, if you don't chew it properly, can lodge it's suckers in your throat and choke you; given my habit of eating too quickly, this is a risk I simply shouldn't take
. visit the DMZ at the 38th parallel where North and South Korea meet; perhaps the next time I'm on the peninsula this will just be a memorial like Germany's Checkpoint Charlie

And, finally, there's the question of what I will miss most about Korea.
First of all, the trite but true response is that I'll miss the friends I made and the kids I taught. Without naming names - this isn't the Academy Awards - I'd like to thank everyone who made my stay in Korea wonderful.
Second, in general I will miss the good people of Korea. They are kind-hearted, honest, earnest and hard-working. Though not as fun as some cultures, the Koreans are, without a doubt, good people. Writing this in Russia where I feel that everyone around me has the potential for evil, I especially miss the honesty of Korea where one could safely send a little girl out at night with a fistful of money to buy groceries and she'd come back unharmed with exact change.
Third, I will miss the food of Korea. Not only was it delicious, inexpensive and readily available anywhere and anytime, but it was so healthy that I lost 13kg in my first 2 months there, and Doug did the same.
Fourth, I will miss several Korean cultural institutions like the street vendors (pojang macha) with cheap and delicious snacks for under a dollar, heated floors (ondol) and the public baths (jjim jil bang / mok yok tang / sauna) in which one can sleep away an evening of drinking.
But overall what I will miss is the overall feeling of the place. Well-designed subways and easy signage even in English. (Except for streets, most of which don't even have names much less signs!). Little if any crime, so it's safe to send a little girl out with a fistful of cash at 4am to buy groceries and you know she'll come back with exact change and not a hair out of place. The feeling that's it's not just a country but an extended family where everyone takes care everyone else's kids. The work- and study- ethic that puts even jews to shame.

I hope I'll have a chance to return to Korea someday. With an honest and hard-working people, it would be great to get involved in business there.

But for now, it's Russia I'm exploring.

Makes Kent State look like a bar fight

2005-05-18T11:31:00.000+08:00

Today marks the 25^th anniversary of the Gwangju Massacre during Korea's military dictatorship. It's odd to realize that many Koreans my age or just a bit older were involved in student protests that brought about democracy in 1987. What were we, their American counterparts, doing? Actually, I guess we were watching the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. Truth be told, I didn't even know anything important was happening in South Korea at that time, aside from the 1988 Olympics. Weird.

If only his name were Ken Lee...

2005-05-17T12:37:00.000+08:00

... maybe W woulda given him a pardon for Chrismas. Come to think of it, Enron sounds like Korean (엔론).

Spring cleaning

2005-05-03T16:02:00.000+08:00

Ah, spring. The sun shines, the birds chirp, the flowers bloom, and here I am at my keyboard. In truth I've been getting out more now that the weather is nice, and I've plenty to report, but I'm still spending lots of time working on internet projects and other stuff that keeps me on my floor at my laptop. We'll get to that in a bit, but first I have a lot to report.

Since I haven't written a real entry since New Year's (for shame!) I feel a need to recap.

After spending December hanging out with Doug at my apartment while he was job-hunting and huddling to stay warm on my heated floor (ondol), I suddenly found myself alone again in January when Doug took a job about 40 minutes away on the eastern edge of Seoul in Macheon (the bottom eastern spur of the purple line on the subway map). This gave me more time to finish up my winter project, FarePrice, which I quietly launched at the end of January. It cost me a fair bit of money to run it initially but now I've got it running in a less expensive manner. I don't imagine it'll ever make money, but I really built it just because I found it useful and maybe show it off as a portfolio piece. Ironically, it was supposed to help me pick venues for my x-mas and lunar (Chinese) New Year holidays in December and February, but it showed me that all warm destinations were expensive at those times. Not entirely surprising, since all Koreans have the same holidays. Anyway, this gave me more time to work on the project.
I don't do New Year's resolutions, but if I did one of mine would have been to get my Russian capabilities back in order. Since teaching English leaves ample free time (and disposable income) for projects and pursuits, I started practicing my Russian in the middle of January with an ethnically-Korean Russian woman who is studying Korean at Seoul National University and worked as a doctor in St. Petersburg. Surprisingly, I've found that my ability to read Russian is much stronger than I'd imagined. My speaking is slowly improving with practice, but I don't know what writing abilities I have, if any. It's also helping give me perspective on English teaching, as is learning Korean which I'm doing less of nowadays.

Oh, and did I mention I went paragliding in the middle of January? Remind me never to do that in winter again. It was only one tandem jump/flight and it was great fun despite the fact the wind was so strong that the snow was moving horizontally rather than falling. Cold and cool all at the same time.

Ryan arrived in late January and spent a few nights at my place before finding a roommate situation in the ultra-hip college-town neighborhood of HongDae. It was cool having him around. It's amazing how two people can co-exist peacefully when my room is only about 3 grown (white) men wide. But I didn't have any trouble hosting Doug or Ryan. (Anyone else wanna come out here and test my patience?)

Over the lunar (Chinese) New Year holiday, which was 4 days plus a weekend in the 2nd week of February, I finally got an modern "hand-phone" to replace the late-90s model I inherited from Henry's friend who moved to Japan. (That means I have a new mobile number, though the old one still reaches me. The new one is +82-10-9957-1975 internationally or 010-9957-1975 inside Korea.) The phone is a schwanky little number by Pantech & Curitel, who make the OEM phones sold as AudioVox in the US, but this model ain't available stateside yet. It's a good piece of equipment, but the software is a bit wonky and it doesn't have good sound quality unless I'm standing still, which is a pain for a peripatetic like myself, and kinda defeats the point of a mobile phone.

The following weekend I went out for drinks with a friend/client in the ritzy Apgujeong area of Seoul, often called Korea's Rodeo Drive. Since it was my turn to buy (as I'd cancelled some appointments at the last minute), I picked up the tab for the two(!) bottles of Belvedere we consumed. To my amazement, I spent more on vodka than on the phone. In part this is due to getting a terrific deal on the phone. How did I do that? Well, I went to TechnoMart with Doug in tow and spent several hours walking around the floor with all the mobile phone shops asking for price quotes on the model I wanted. Finally I found a shop offering it for 2/3 the price everyone else was asking. Also in the process I bought more RAM for my laptop, a better webcam, and a surround sound system for Suzanne. Carrying all that stuff around did something to the nerves in my left shoulder blade and I paid the price for it for the rest of February.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. After buying the phone I went to Suzanne's to deliver/install the surround sound system (I am, after all, her meusseum), tested it out by watching Collateral together, and spent the night on her heated floor. (Have I mentioned how much I love heated floors? They're the best thing about Korea. Well, them and the saunas, aka jjim-jil-bang, aka mok-yok-tang.) The following morning, still a day off, our friend Kelly called to invite us out for a drive as her parents weren't using their car. (Please remember that all unmarried Koreans are expected to live with their parents, and multi-car families are about as normal as they would be in Manhattan.) Since neither Suzanne nor I had been out of the city much since our arrivals we took her up on the offer. Little did we know that she hadn't spent much time out of the city either, so we ended up driving into the province surrounding Seoul, called Ggyeonggi-Do, then back into Seoul for dinner at the newly opened Space-9 shopping/entertainment complex, and then back out for an evening of listening to Korean ballads performed by up-and-coming(?) Korean crooners. Kelly was quite pleased to spend 3 hours doing this, and even paid for our cover and a round of horrifically expensive drinks. Suffice it to say that ballads are even cheesier when you have no idea what they mean. But we were stranded in an unknown place in a foreign land, so we listened politely and didn't whine too much.

And then it was time to return to work. Koreans do this odd thing where they have four days off and then have to come into work just for Friday. Actually, many Koreans (including my Korean co-teachers) work on a half-day Saturdays so they come back for a day and a half. Somehow this seems silly to my lazy western mind.

Valentine's Day came and I ate a ridiculous amount of candy given to me by my students. So much, in fact, that I feared I'd backslide on the 12kg I lost when I came to Korea. But returning to my all-Korean diet put me back on the right track. In Korea it's women who buy men candy on Valentine's Day. Men are expected to reciprocated on "White Day" (March 14). And single folks are supposed to eat a meal of Chinese noodles with black bean sauce called jja-jjeong-myeon on "Black Day" (April 14). But again I'm getting ahead of myself. My own fault for leaving so much unblogged.

Where were we? Oh, yes, Valentine's Day, mid-February... I don't think much more happened in February. At least, not much that stands out and seems worthy of conveying so long after the fact. Oh, wait, I remember. I threw a bit of a fit to force my school/landlord to fix the hot water in my shower at my apartment since they hadn't done it in the 3 weeks since my roommate had complained. (It was broken for over 2 months, but at first I just thought it was the cold outside doing it.) The tantrum worked and my shower was fixed and hot again within 20 hours. Which was great, but now I had less of an excuse to visit Seoul's plethora of public baths which I do love so...

March came along and I was hoping to see the spring, but apart from a few odd days, it wasn't really here yet. I went on a couple of tours with The Royal Asiatic Society to the tombsites of former kings and the fortress and palaces of Suwon. But most of March was spent preparing for and anticipating my mother's visit to Korea and our trip to Japan.

Finally, the day came. It was a perfect spring Sunday at the end of March, with clear skies and a pleasant temperature. I wrapped up my classes at my friend John's church where he teaches me and Doug Korean and then we teach some of the folks a bit of English and made my way to the airport just in time.

There's over a month's worth of stuff to catch up on, especially mom's visit to Seoul and our trip to Japan, but I think it's time to post this, so I'll sign off for now.

They really are all the same (despite hating each other)

2005-04-20T21:43:00.000+08:00

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. I've got a lot of updates to write up. Here's a quickie for the moment:
I've been looking into teaching in Japan and have discovered that what Koreans call ddong jjim is called kancho in Japan, and it's equally popular with the kids. I don't know what kancho translates to, but ddong jjim is literally "dung accupuncture."
Also, you may be surprised to discover that cherry blossoms, "sakura" in Japan, are equally lovely in Korea where they're called "butt ggot" (perhaps they should switch that with the previous term).

New Year's High-Jix

2005-01-03T20:35:00.000+08:00

Wanna know how I greeted 2005 in Seoul? Check out Suzanne's blog entry about it.

Santa's little impersonator

2004-12-23T11:36:00.000+08:00

My school needed someone to be Santa Claus for the kindergarteners, and they needed someone who doesn't teach them. Last year they had Mark play Santa, but the kids recognized him. (Proving, once and for all, that white people don't all look the same.)
Since I'm the only foreign male who only teachs the elementary school kids I was chosen. I like to think it's only that, and not the degree to which my figure resembles that of Saint Nick.
So I came to my school at 10am and put on the red suit in the faculty lounge/office, which has plenty of windows through which I had to be very careful the kids didn't see me. (I don't recall faculty lounges in American schools being transparent to the students, but Korea's different.) Then I was informed that the photographer was running late, so I sat in the back of the lounge with a huge sweatshirt covering the red suit and read Toby's copy of Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom for about half an hour.
When the photographer arrived a sweet Korean kinder-teacher summoned me in her best imitation of English. Doffing my sweatshirt and donning the beard, hat and mittens, I went to the door of the auditorium which, for some inexplicable reason, we call the "playground." Again, this room has lots of windows so the kids could see me approach so I didn't quite make the entrance I'd have liked but the kids were clearly pleased. I was led in and seated next to the chrismas tree on a slightly raised platform onto which the kids came up one-by-one to receive a wrapped present which the aforementioned teacher would hand me from the santa bag as though she was my elf. The photographer ordered the kids around gruffly and took two pictures of each: one of the child receiving the gift from Old Man Winter and another of the child seated on my lap. It felt a lot like being a shopping mall Santa Claus except the background wasn't as elaborate and the kids weren't as snotty. Some were enthusiastic, some were nervous, all were well-behaved and most said "merry chrismas" as their teachers instructed them. Then the entire class would line up for a group photo with me and their teacher, and it was onto the next class. There were four or five classes.
Once all the kids filtered out of the auditorium/playground I slipped out and snuck into the bathroom to remove the costume. However, some boys figured out that was the place to go if they wanted to find out Santa's secret identity. Not wanting to scar the children with the truth that Santa is a white man with five-o-clock shadow on his shaved head I had to outwait them in the stall. I'd like to believe that none of them made the connection between Santa and the weird white dude who walked down the hall a few minutes after they left the bathroom.
It was fun. I might borrow the costume to play Santa for the orphanage on Saturday. Maybe not, as they seem to get lots of Santas on x-mas from what I read in the invitation.

underground overhang

2004-12-20T21:18:00.000+08:00

I woke up on Sunday morning knowing that something was amiss. Why? Well, I was in bed. And I don't sleep in a bed. I sleep on the heated floor (ondol) like any good Korean. So when I realized I was in a bed my first instinct was to figure out whose bed it was. I cracked my eyes open only to find the familiarity of my room - so much for that pretentious concern - and my buddy Doug was sleeping on the floor where I usually sleep. (He's been sleeping in my bed whilst crashing at my pad and looking for work in Korea. Actually, he's not so much looking for work as turning down work. It's amazingly easy to get English-teaching work here, but he's picky.) At this point I notice that there's a trashcan by the bed, and I begin to realize... I was drinking last night. In fact, I was out with all of my colleagues at the school's holiday dinner/karaoke. Let's see, we ate that amazing Korean beef - it's far superior to what my words can convey - and I drank some beer and some bek se ju. Afterwards we went to a schwanky norae bang (private karaoke room) and I started drinking the whisky that was on the table. Out of a highball glass, if memory serves me correctly, which it clearly doesn't. And then I came back from the bathroom and a Korean colleague who's recently returned to the school handed me the mic for an impromptu rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." And then John-teacher arrived wearing red and I hugged him. Then I took a bunch of pictures. Then I woke up in bed with an empty trash can beside me. Hmmmm... I've never blacked out before.

So now it's time to pick up the pieces. No, actually now it's time to pee, drink some water and go back to bed. It's only 8am and I'm still drunk for goodness sake!
OK, consciousness and a headache re-emerge at 10a and Doug's awake. "Uh, Doug, what happened last night?" Doug cheerfully recounted how Ciara, my 5'4" Irish roommate, and Kevin, another 5'4" Irishmen we teach with, dragged me home around 1a. How they managed to get my sloppy drunk carcass up the steps to this place is utterly beyond me. But he reported that they were true-to-form Irishmen and unphased. After dumping me safely in the bed they resumed their Saturday evening festivities.
Doug put my vomit-stained shirt into the washing machine. Oh, wait, I vomited? Uh-oh. I'm not a good vomiter. I've only done it about 6 times in my adult life. Once at the River Edge Diner between x-mas and New Year's 2000, in an incident Thierry and Simon will never let me forget. Four times when I was hospitalized for my ruptured appendex this past spring. And last night. So the problem is I have so little experience with vomitting that I have no idea when I'm about to do it. I'm always as surprised as the folks I puke near/at. When Ciara came home she confirmed that one of my fears was only slightly founded: I'd puked on Mark's sweater, but it didn't seem to be a direct hit on him. And I got it on the sofa. OK, that's better than I'd feared. It could've been a full facial assault on my boss for all I knew.
The next thing to determine was weather I'd gotten belligerent or violent. Unlikely, as those aren't really my kinda vices. Argumentative, boastful, flamboyant, all the stuff I do when sober, that gets worse. But threats and blows aren't really my style.
Oh, and where are my glasses? And my camera? And my right shoe? Hmmmmm...

Ciara suggested that the shoe was probably in Jerry's car. WAIT! Jerry drove? No way! He was as drunk as me from what I last recall. Though that was probably a good hour or three before the night really ended, so I'm sure I pulled ahead toward the end. Actually, he didn't drive. Apparently it's quite common for staff at bars and other drinking establishments to drive their inebriated clients home in their own cars, and I was dropped off en route in Jerry's lovely Equus sedan.
Around 8p Domo, the proprietor of our fine hakwon, called to say that he had my glasses. And to inquire how I was doing. Apparently he'd come into possession of my spectacles while helping take care of me post-puke. A good guy that Domo. I definitely picked the right place to work.
OK, so the specs and shoe seem to be accounted for but where's the camera? That's probably the best way to reconstruct the events of the evening. As I write this I still don't know what became of it. Maybe it's still at the norae bang.

I apologized to all of my colleagues when i came to school, and that was before asking what had happened. Everyone graciously accepted/deferred my apology. Koreans are very polite, and it's considered a grave sin to make someone lose face, so I suspect I haven't heard all of it, but here's what I've found out from the westerners.
Apparently my shirt came off several times before it had to be removed due to vomit-content. Several of my foreign (non-Korean) co-teachers pestered me a month or so back at a bar in HongDae to show them my tattoo, but I refused to remove my shirt in a bar full of strangers. When we got to the private song room, though, they asked me if they'd get to see it that night. And since it was sufficiently private and I was sufficiently tipsy, I agreed. It's largely unclear why I had to show it to them several times, but I'm sure it's somewhere in the spectrum of my boastful-flamboyant vice quadrant. No-one's mentioned if I attempted my rendition of 50cent's "In da Club".

Jerry hadn't found my shoe in his car, but he hadn't looked. He probably spent Sunday recovering just as I had. Maybe he'll find it tonight, but I'm gonna buy a new pair of shoes tomorrow. Probably in the subway, as that's where so much commerce seems to take place. On last month's test one of my classes was asked: "I need to buy socks. Where's the ______? (a) subway (b) gas station (c) mall". What did they all answer? Subway. At first I thought I'd failed to explain what a mall is, but they seem to have imported that word into Korean. No, it's just that Koreans are accustomed to buying socks in the subway.

Speaking of which, alas, my hangover forced me to delay my plans for Underground Day on Sunday. No great loss as the weather wasn't as bad as expected, and the Korean underground ain't going nowhere so long as Kim Jong-Il doesn't drink as hard as I did. More on that when it happens...

Perhaps I should pick one up while I'm here

2004-12-10T13:20:00.000+08:00

If I could just get over their lack of bootie, I'd get me a world-dominating Korean woman.

Proof that I'm lame and got no game

2004-12-05T21:44:00.000+08:00

Note that both hands are on the beer.

A Mid-Autumn Night's Blog

2004-11-23T10:39:00.000+08:00

Hard to believe that it's been almost a month since I returned from Japan, but time flies. Actually, time feels like it's been dragging a bit. I've set into something of a routine, which means I'm not experiencing as much novelty as I did when I first arrived in Seoul. Also, fall has fallen so a bit of SADness has come into my life with the shortening days. Then again, until this week my routine involved waking up around 11 or 12, which dramatically cut into the number of daylight hours available to me. When I was staying with the Jordanos in Seoul I would be up by 8 when the kids got up, so not only was I getting positive energy from living with them but I was also getting maximal daylight hours in the summertime. Already I look back on those weeks as my halcyon days in Seoul. But there's no sense moping that things aren't as great as they once were. Especially when they're still pretty darned great.

My job remains a rewarding and enjoyable experience. While not as intellectually challenging as working in Silicon Valley, it's much more satisfying in most other ways. Even when I'm tired or feeling blue, showing up to a classroom of 8-year-olds who adore me is one of the best pick-me-ups ever. Working less than 6 hours per day from 3-9p with a 45-minute break in the middle is a pretty sweet schedule. It's allowed me to turn nocturnal, but I'm weening myself from that because I want to see more daylight hours and I now have some morning activities. (More on that below.) Also, I get along pretty well with all my co-workers and all but one of my kids. That one's a bit of a discipline problem by Korean standards, but no big deal by American standards. Anyway, I think I've gotten him in line by channeling my inner drill seargent - a la "Full Metal Jacket" and "And Officer And A Gentleman" - and dressing him down at such a volume that the school's director and owner came running into the classroom fully expecting to see me hitting him. (I'd never do such a thing.) Ever since then he's been much better, although I think my co-teachers whose classrooms were within earshot are now a bit scared of me. Oh well. Again, there's no sense on dwelling on the one bad kid when all my other kids - about 80 of them - are so great.

It turned out that my Verizon phone failed to roam in Korea because I forgot to go to a VZW office and have them program it to use a Korean network. Well, after 2 months without a mobile phone, called a "hand-phone" in Asia, I felt it was time to rejoin the 21st century. I did quite a bit of research online and discovered that, because Korea follows most American and Canadian operators in using the CDMA standard for their mobile phone network, most of the really cool phones I'd like to have aren't available for the Korean market. Don't get me wrong: there are plenty of super-cool phones here, with multi-megapixel cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, TV-viewing and other cool features. There just aren't any with Bluetooth, an up-and-coming technology I'm very excited about. And since Korean operators, like every market except North America, doesn't subsidize phone prices with annual contracts, so phones are quite pricey but monthly bills aren't. Also, like most of the world except North America, Korean mobile phone companies don't expect you to pre-buy a certain number of minutes every month. They have pre-pay and bill-as-you-go plans (the latter unavailable without a domestic credit card, which foreigners can't get), and you only pay for the time you use, which is billed in 10-second increments. There's much more info about it here.
Anyway, I didn't want to shell out big money for a phone that doesn't have all the features I want, so I was looking around for cheaper used phones to hold me over until something Bluetooth-enabled hits the Korean market. As it turned out, I was with Suzanne in an Itaewon (foreigner-town) phone store looking at some ancient phones when an Nigerian guy named Henry offered to give me a phone a friend left him when he left the country. So I now have a Samsung circa 1999 and a new friend from Nigeria. Now I really need to learn to speak Korean, as my phone has no English menu. Fortunately it has almost the same menu as the Samsung phones that Thierry and I both had in 2002. If only it was an old StarTAC. I could navigate the software in one of those blindfolded. Speaking of StarTACs, there's a StarTAC Classic on the market here. Anyway, I'm just glad to have rejoined the new millenium, and can be reached in Korea at 010-2897-9876 or abroad at +82-10-2897-9876.

Speaking of the Korean mobile phone market, in the interest of business networking, I've started tutoring a marketing executive at a global network equipment company who works on marketing their wireless telecommunications equipment. This requires me to wake up to the sound of an alarm clock again, but that's probably a benefit for my schedule, and I feel like I learn more from him about his business than he learns from me about English. I'll probably teach some more folks in the IT/business world while I'm here. While the kids are great fun, it's also enjoyable to speak with people who have a deeper mastery of language and mature intellects.

Additionally, I've started volunteering at an orphanage. Given the popularity of Korean adoptees in the States, I figured that it would be pretty empty, with only "undesirable" kids. Surprisingly, there were plenty of youngsters and they all seemed normal and adoptable. I don't understand this. One Korean I asked said that there's some shame in Korea about having so many orphans and they've decided to hide the problem by not exporting them. And Koreans don't like adopting as they have a big belief in bloodlines and ancestry. This strikes me as really sad. Damned Confucianism.

UPDATE: Doug bought a ticket and will arrive in Seoul in early December! Woohoo! The International Lenny Turetsky Fan Club's Seoul Chapter continues to grow. Ryan from Salesforce.com is probably coming at the end of December. Anyone else?

visa running - Osaka and Kyoto

2004-10-26T14:23:00.000+08:00

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

2004-10-17T01:50:00.000+08:00

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

2004-10-09T22:32:00.000+08:00

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.

reading Korean

2004-09-19T11:23:00.000+08:00

I'm settling into Seoul. I've found a job with a local hogwan (private school) teaching children ages 6-16 how to speak English.Their English isn't great, but better than I'd expected. Certainly better than the Spanish or French spoken by American children that age.
Koreans are very committed to becoming a hub of international business, so they label just about everything in English (e.g., subways) and teach all children English from elementary school through college as a requirement. And many parents send their kids to private schools like my hogwan to teach them even more English. (I'll write another blog on Korea's education fetish soon.)
I taught myself to read Korean on the flight over here, which was really easy as there are only 28 letters and they don't do anything weerd (sic). Nothing in Korean like English's craziness of "cough", "rough", "though", "through" and "bough" not rhyming.Since I don't yet speak much Korean and everything is labeled in English, there's not much actual use of my reading skills. But it's helped me to understand the kids' pronunciation errors.
Why was I able to read Korean so quickly? Because the writing system, Hangul, is extraordinarily well-designed. I say designed because, unlike most writing systems which grew over time, Hangul was actually designed. The Korean language is linguistically in the same family as Mongolia and Turkish (try mapping that progression!), but was written with Chinese characters until the 15th century. That's when the great Emperor Sejong, the closest thing Korea's ever had to the ideal Confucian benevolent dictator, decided that the writing system was too complicated and too few of his subjects were literate. So he charged his court philosophers with creating a new system, and they created Hangul. Would you like to learn to read Korean? Try http://langintro.com/kintro/first.htm.
Korean has no sounds like F, V, Z or either of the pronunciations of TH (as in "then" and "thin"). Also, they don't use the S sound in certain situations, so they have trouble pronouncing "see" and say "she". (For example, they like to eat at the many "KFshe" restaurants around Seoul.) Furthermore, only certain consonants can end a syllable, so my last name is pronounced "Too-ret-suh-key". Oh, and they don't make a strong distinction between R and L, as they're both written with the same Korean symbol which looks like the number 2 in a block font. Hopefully your software can display this character: ㄹ.
Understanding this helps me because I can write the pronounciation of certain words, like my name, in Korean for my students (which they read as "Renny" unless I write it in both English and Korean). They seem to be very impressed by this capability and clapped the first time I did it.
Near as I can tell, there are no sounds in Korean that don't exist in English though that may be the result of my inability to hear or pronounce those sounds. They have some sounds that are between our sounds for T&D, and G&K, but those aren't too hard to learn.

Because of Korea's housing rental system, it's almost impossible for a foreignor to get his own apartment, and employer's provide housing for their foreign workers. I've got an apartment near my school (near the Chongshin Univ (Isu) subway station #432) which I share with an Irish teacher named Kiara. She seems very cool, but I don't know her very well yet as I haven't actually spent more than five minutes in my new apartment. I'm still staying with John, Jess, Xavier and Persephone. It's sad to realize that once they leave Korea I probably won't see them again until 2006. Persephone definitely won't remember me then, but hopefully Xavier will.

Happy trails,

Lenny

lenny.blog.tv.kr

2004-09-12T19:13:00.000+08:00

Korean television is an odd experience. In part because I don't understand the language, and in part because I haven't really watched much TV in the past 7 years or so.

There are several specialty channels worth noting, such as a channel devoted to the game of Go and a channel devoted to broadcasting video game tournaments.

Gameshows seem to be about as surreal as Japanese, and I'm tempted to engage in my own Most Extreme Challenge narration.

Of course, there's lots of Hollywood movies with subtitles, and a fair bit of American programming available on the US Armed Forces channel.

A few things I just saw while channel surfing just now (Sunday evening): OnStyle, WWF, a samurai epic (Japanese or Korean, I can't say), a variety show hosted by a woman who's mixed Korean and African-American, Cartoon Network, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, MTV, a Jeopardy-style show with white contestants but asian hosts and audience, several Korean soap operas, Korean home shopping network, a Korean show about mountaineering, -- uh-oh, Jess has decided to watch the mountaineering show. Oh well.

All in all, not much different from American TV, with the exception of oddities like the Go and video game channels.

Greetings from Seoul, S. Korea

2004-09-09T23:00:00.000+08:00

It's 8a in Korea and I'm about to start my first full day here.

After an uneventful 16.5 hours of travel - much of which I slept through- I arrived at Incheon International Airport, which looks like any otherairport except that all the signs are written in Korean, Chinese and English.

I figured out how to buy and use a phone card, called the Jordanos, and was soon on a bus to the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul where they live.

I dragged my luggage to a FamilyMart convenience store where I used myphone card to call John and Jess, and soon John and Xavier arrived to scoop me up and bring me to their nearby apartment. Seeing John, Jess, Xavier and Persephone again was great.

As I'd slept quite a bit on the flight - because I hadn't slept a wink the night before - I was up for an evening on the town. So we put Persephone in her stroller and went out to see Itaewon.
Itaewon feels like a Koreatown back in the states, which actually means it's a Foreignortown in Korea. Most of the shops, restaurants and bars cater to "way-gooks" (foreignors), especially "mee-gooks" (Americans) as there's a large US military base nearby. And being with the Jordanos made it seem even more like I'm in a stateside Koreatown. Part of me doesn't yet believe I'm actually in Asia.

My Verizon phone doesn't work in S. Korea as expected. I'm working onfiguring that out. But I do receive voicemail, and email access is good.

So please keep in touch and I'll do my best to do the same.

Love,

Lenny

PS Thanks to everyone who came to the (almost) empty studio to say goodbye and take my stuff. With Vern's help I got the untaken stuff out and myself to SFO on time.
PPS My apologies to anyone who didn't know I was going to Korea. (Surprise!)