Updates

So, what’s the story morning-glory? What’s new?


I am behind on all things Korea as far as this here blog is concerned. Generally speaking, most of my friends are also Facebook friends (I wouldn’t dare call somebody a rare friend if Facebook didn’t confirm this fact) and know what’s up with the state of things. There are a number of people with whom (or who, I don’t know) I speak pretty much daily. These people also know more of my activities than is necessary. So, this pretty much for people who aren’t subjected to my Facebook status messages.

What’s gone on since I have been back in Korea and since Kelly has been back at old Plymouth Rock? A bunch.

I returned to find the basic daily happenings of my school had all changed. We no longer give out stickers. This is a good thing in that I don’t have to finish a class with a minute to spare and then have a bunch of kids sacking me at the door and demanding 3 stickers a pop that I had yet to put my official signature on. This also sucked for a while because I had to use this Chinese tally character and mark how many points each kid earned in the class. This was a problem because it required me to know all of my kids’ names. This is something I struggle with still to this day. I am horrible with names anyway, forget throwing in names with sounds I can barely pronounce. So, I know a lot more names than I did a month ago. If I come to a class whose names I am still screwing up I tend to give everyone 4 points and call it even.

I had slow days Mondays and Wednesdays until Han went and annoyed Minnie and Daniels mother by telling her that she thought Daniel maybe copied his homework out of a book instead of doing it on his own. Not a big deal, really. Obviously their Mom flipped her lid and pulled them both out of the school. I was actually pretty sad to hear that Minnie was gone. She was difficult sometimes (often) and she was remarkably clever about sidetracking me and I was stunningly passive about getting back on track, but I thought of her as my student more than anyone else. I taught her every day and put a lot of care into not driving her insane and running her into the ground.

So, I had slow Mondays and Wednesdays before; now I basically do nothing. My class load is evened out by getting slammed on Tuesday’s and Thursdays (plus an extra hour of tutoring) and teaching at a second school on Friday nights.

I dread Tuesdays and Thursdays way more than I should. I have a couple of “bad” classes (in that the kids sort of drive me mad and often make it their goal to make me yell) but after that I deal with the older, generally more subdued, kids. It just tends to drag on. The tutoring is no big deal, really. I tutor the Receptionist and the Driver (formerly known as the Younger Receptionist: apparently she was our bus driver). It is difficult though in that I have zero confidence in my true teaching abilities. Usually I can win kids over by making funny noises with my eye or subdue them with my spray bottle. I can’t very well spray the receptionist and expect to live. And anyway, there are times when I am teaching kids that I just go blank for a moment or forget what I was talking about. The kids never notice because it is unlikely they were paying much attention anyway or it adds a little “natural” conversation into those classes. When I blank out with the adults it is pretty frigging obvious I just had a mental fart.



Dr. Jones and his hat.



There was a little spat with North Korea. I feel like a moron for always being behind in this thing when something other than Dr. Jones wearing a “mother fucker” hat but that’s what happens when you are lazy. I went to the bar with some friends to celebrate my buddy Tim’s birthday and the place was dead and the only TV had the barkeeps hovering around it wondering what the president was going to say about it. It could have also been dead because it was a Tuesday or something. Anyway, after it all happened the course of action depended on who you talked to. A lot of people (a lot of Koreans) said “oh, big deal, they do this all the time.” Then there were a few people who were actually pretty concerned about war. As time has passed it seems to be a little bit of both that has become the reality. North Korea basically got a giant “WTF” from the South. During and after the funerals though the Korean Marines were calling for blood and the general populous seemed to be pretty much through with putting up with violence and “provocations” by the North as a means of extorting aid and calls for diplomatic discussions. So, there have been a bunch of military drills and preventative measures incase of any future attacks. Maybe it is that civilians were in the line of an open attack but it seems that the next time the North does anything of the like again it could get real serious real fast. The new Defense Minister is promising an air strike to counter any further incidents and who knows how the North would react to that. They had evacuation drills in Seoul yesterday complete with fighter jets to add to the “oh shit” feeling.

The holidays are here. Ordinarily I am like a little child at this time of the year but I am not so this year. This will be my first Christmas not with my family and it is a little rough. It is a little rough for all of us here, I imagine, which is nice because I like not suffering alone; but communal misery isn’t a replacement for family during the holidays.

In other holiday news my school is putting on a Christmas show this coming Saturday for all of the parents. The kids are performing such holiday plays as “Hansel and Gretel,” “Cinderella”, and a reading from some story about an abused dog and a dying grandfather. There are also such Christmas songs as “All I Want for Christmas” by Mariah Carey and “Puff the Magic Dragon.” I am actually responsible for that last one, having suggested it as an easy song to learn. I was then promptly punished for mentioning I had a guitar and not mentioning that I play the same O.A.R. songs over and over and will now be playing Puff the Magic Dragon in front of all of the parents.

Read more...

Tokyo: The End (featuring Hello Kitty)

Oh dear god.

One of the criteria to judge whether or not a medium is obscene or just in bad taste is a lack of any culturally redeeming quality. Some things, not matter how vile or distasteful or generally sick, have some statement about our societies or culture as a whole. Some things just exist for no other reason than to be base or heinous. The guy from Two Girls One Cup violated obscenity law got hit with almost $100,000 forfeiture and 3 years of probation. Others have gone to jail and others should have gone to jail.

Which brings me to Hello Kitty Land.

I wouldn’t have ordinarily made an out of the way trip to HKL but the thing with travel and life in general is that we are all living “out of the way” sort of lives. Besides, Kelly is obsessed with Hello Kitty in much the same way that mammals are obsessed with air. I am fairly positive that one of the reasons she never got wise and ditched me while I was in Korea was that a long time ago I told her if we ever found ourselves in Japan we would go to HKL (actually called Sanrio Puroland).

She called my bluff.

It wasn’t terribly simple to get to the park but we managed. We hopped on one metro (our brief lives in Japan revolved around Shinjuku Station) and thanks to some girl with a decent understanding of English we were soon on another metro heading further out into Tokyo.

KH in HK's tub.

We rode that last metro for quite a while; long enough that I was quite positive we had missed the stop and was wondering how Kelly would take the news. We came so close, I would say, there’s some comfort in that.

I tried to tell Khall that I thought we would have to double back towards a stop that sounded remotely like the stop we wanted and she barely paid me any attention. She knew we hadn’t passed the stop we wanted and spent most of the rest of the ride looking like some manic psycho on the way to burn down some buildings.

Eventually, we stepped out of the subway, crossed the station, headed down a crowded street, hung a left and there it was: Sanrio Puroland, better known as Hello Kitty Land.

It didn’t look so horrible, I thought as we walked and Kelly squealed and spoke a mile a minute. From a distance it didn’t look too far off from Disney World. It had all the necessary requirements that allow the potential for a “forget yourself and get lost in your suppressed youth” sort of good time.

The main building seemed to pop out of thin air when you took that left. It looked like a cross between an amphitheatre and a casino. It looked decidedly unconventional, as all amazing theme parks should, and seemed to draw in everyone near by. The shops along the walkway sold food and all things Hello Kitty. All theme parks worth their weight should let out a sort of commercial sprawl that blots out any lame local specialties like paintings or sculptures. Beyond the gates was what I assumed to be the park grounds, where I would spend the day riding roller coasters and bumper cars and eating French fries. I didn’t even mind that the roller coaster would have a cartoon cat on its front.



Oh jeez..



Words cannot accurately describe my emotions when we stepped in and realized that the weird looking building was not only the main building, but also the entire park. Nor can they really accurately describe what it is like to walk into an “amusement” on the opposite side of the world expecting rides and games and carneys. Words also can’t accurately describe the nightmare of realizing your day was going to be spent in a poorly lit McDonald’s play place from hell.

Oh, wait, yes they can: What the f%@*?! would pretty much sum it up.

Hello Kitty Land is not a land, it is a giant building with hallways of magic (read: hell) that circle a huge fake tree scene in the center. Scattered about the floors are such amazing activities as make your own Hello Kitty being (through a series of semi-confusing mini-games) and Hello Kitty’s actual house. Then, of course there are multiple stores on every floor, vendors vending HK paraphernalia, and the worst food court known to man.

It wasn’t all bad, though. There is a ride. One ride. The entire park contained one ride. Given that it was fairly early on a week day, Kelly and I waited for about 3 minutes before we were sat in a log flume boat. All right, I thought. I love log flumes. Splash Mountain once broke down with me on it for a good 15 - 20 minutes and it was 15 - 20 minutes of heaven. Maybe there would even be a drop.

There were four of us in the boat. I was on the left, Kelly was on the right, and two women sat in front of us, the larger of the two also on the left. The result of this was that the boat at times seemed at risk of taking on water port side or straight up capsizing.

Immediately, the ride was in darkness and I heard the chains straining to pull us up a steep incline. I put my camera down and held onto the safety bar. I am no fool when it comes to log flumes, this was the start of something good and I wasn’t about to let my camera get soaked when we splashed down at the bottom. There was a twinge of excitement as we reached the summit and pointed towards exhilaration.

The clasp let us loose and for a second we begin to slide down. Immediately we were seized by some sort of braking mechanism and descended the hill slower than our ascent. Seriously?

As I tried to keep myself from falling forward and into the laps of a couple of strangers I saw what I was in for. Imagine, if you will, that Hello Kitty and all her strange friends invaded and conquered It’s A Small world and you pretty much get the theme of the one ride at the park.

We bumped along the river, always dipping towards the left, and got to see horrible animatronics buzzing around brightly lit pink scenes. The climax of the ride was actually being present as Hello Kitty married her boyfriend. I snapped some pictures as I wondered what on earth I had done to wind up in this particular circle of hell.

Hello Kitty Land

There was one other foreigner in the entire place. He was an older guy from the States who had the excuse of working there. He sold silhouettes. You could buy a pre-made profile of Hello Kitty, or a custom cut profile of yourself and Hello Kitty. If you chose the latter option he even had the decency to throw in the negative side of your profile for no extra cost on top of the $50 or so the thing actually cost us.

That he was a champion up seller or not, the guy was actually pretty cool. He cut out a fairly accurate profile of Kelly in a minute or so and told us his entire life story. He had been working for Disney. He was apparently the creator of most of their well known profiles, beloved by silhouette artisans everywhere before he made the move to Tokyo. Then he single handedly created the profile of Hello Kitty and his fame led him to stand day in and day out in some sort of fluffy pirate shirt on the main thoroughfare. Sarcasm and bitterness aside the guy was actually pretty impressive as far as where he had been and what he had done.



Yoyogi Park



So, that was Hello Kitty Land. It wasn’t the greatest place I have ever been but I guess you can’t complain too much when your girlfriend gives you a free trip to a theme park. In any case, I can appreciate her wanting to go given that it’s an obsession of hers. Hell, whenever somebody opens up Lord of the Rings Land or Star Wars World I will be there.



Shibuya Intersection



We stayed in Japan another couple of days before we made our way back to Seoul. We went to a huge park called Yoyogi Park in Shibuya. We walked around there for a long time before returning through the Shibuya Intersection. I don’t know the cross streets but if you have seen any modern movie based in Tokyo (Lost in Translation) you would know the place. Basically there is a mass of people going in every direction when the crosswalk signs light up to the backdrop of a giant video screen in a building.

In Seoul, we got to see a giant Lantern Festival and eat really expensive steaks at Outback Steak House which I made up for by buying a new guitar.

Kelly came back to Cheongju and got to see what actually happens in my classes. For instance, she got to see me spray kids with water, wrestle them, and pin them into corners and teach them while holding them in head locks. I was sad to see her go, but all in all it was an AWESOME vacation!

Read more...

Tokyo: Meiji Shrine.

Lanterns.

We passed into the cleared swatch of land adjacent to Harajuku as twilight faltered towards complete darkness. Stars are rare where I live in Korea and the smog of Tokyo seems also to make their viewing stars an impossibility.

There was light still as we crossed the footbridge to the Harajuku metro station and entered the clearing and followed the crowd into a narrow path of cleared trees. To our right were a couple hundred white, paper lanterns with black Japanese characters emblazoned on the front.

We walked for a ways and the trees cut off what was left of the twilight and plunged the path into muted darkness. It seemed hard to believe that we were still in Tokyo. The sound of traffic and the rattle of the metro was absent; cut off like the light by the trees. There was a silence about the place that separated it from the realities of modern day Japan.

The place was the Meiji Shrine.

If the trees seemed unnaturally plentiful (in that the place seemed almost totally natural, despite being in the heart of Tokyo) it is because they were arranged that way. Though we knew none of this until we left the shrine (we were, after all, just following a bunch of people for no discernable reason).

For the sake of getting what little history of the Meiji Shrine that I know out there: the shrine was built to honor Emperor Meiji and his empress sometime between 1915 and the mid to late 1920’s. This structure was then promptly decimated in a whole bunch of air raids. The shrine, as it is now, was finished in the late 1950’s.

Lamp.

What is most interesting about the shrine (to me, at least, most people would be impressed by the Buddhist presence and the temples and the sense of walking around a giant anachronism) were the trees. The forest was thick and overwhelming and dominate because it was made to be that way. People from all over Japan donated trees (evergreens) in such reverence to the emperor that the trees effectively serve as a barrier between the noise and pollution of modern Tokyo and the lantern lit paths of the Meiji Shrine.

Still, there was some pollution in the form of two tourists who didn’t actually know where the hell they were.

Kelly and I walked for a while from one building to another until it came that save a few electric lights and the general awareness of other tourists, our surroundings harked back to more traditional times. The darkness was overwhelming at times. As the last of the sun’s light fell, giant wooden structures with tiled roofs that were colorful and ornate in the day became masses of complete black. The only light to be had was an occasional lamp that gave of a dim yellow glow.

It was an effective mood setter.

Hand cleansing.

We passed what looked to be a huge fence-like structure with thousands and thousands of small wooden planks on which people from all over the world inscribed their hopes and dreams. We watched monks walk about their business in the darkness beyond where the general pedestrian was allowed to go.

Before we left we came across a place to cleanse our hands and mouths a small ceremony of respect to the sanctity of the shrine. Of course, we didn’t know this until after we poured water all over our hands and drank the stuff in the dark and looked like general morons. Apparently you cleanse your mouth my rinsing it with the water and spitting it back. If this is the truth we basically made out with the entire population of Tokyo.

On our way out I bought some ornate paper and cheap reproduction prints of some overused Japanese paintings. It seemed like a bargain at the time but given that I have the wrong conversion in my head I probably spent over $50 on some crappy paper.

In more recent news, this is Dr. Jones. Other than snot pouring out of his nose like Niagara Falls on occasion he is pretty much amazing.

Read more...

Japan: Harajuku

An alley in Harajuku.

Harajuku was, despite what Gwen Stefani wanted me to believe, not full of Japanese hipsters on steroids. Kelly and I climbed the stairs leading out of Harajuku station hoping to see the gothic lolitas, leather clad, blue anime-haired mentioned, well, everywhere that mentions Harajuku. No. That wasn’t the case and I was a little disappointed to tell the truth. I had brought my camera in hopes of maybe catching a couple of images worthy of FRUiTS magazine or at least prove I went to the original Hot Topic / Spencer Gifts.

“Well, it is Tuesday morning,” Kelly said. “They’re probably, you know, in school.”

I conceded to the fact but it was bitter. Kelly was more excited than I was as she seems to have grown up emblemizing the kind of fashion synonymous with Harajuku. So, I was disappointed for about half a second as we climbed the stairs of a footbridge connecting the station to a complex of shop filled alleys and streets.

  Tuesday morning or not Harajuku was hopping as all of Tokyo perpetually is. We stood for a time in a corner pressed up against the guardrail as cars whizzed below and people passed around us as though we were tiny rocks in a raging torrent. Opposite the alleys and streets seemed to be a wide clearing. Beyond it a couple of wide paths led into what seemed to be a deep forest in the middle of Tokyo.

“Something for later,” one of us said.

Harajuku brought an image of Boston’s Newbury Street on cocaine. There was the main road that went on for a ways but then was lost in the distance by turn and clothing racks. We walked into the street and found that seemingly every dozen feet or so there was an alley that led to another street full of jewelers and clothing outfitters.

In Korea, even in such developed places as Seoul’s Itaewon or Insadong there is the main drag, but the commercial or tourist influence ends there. The back alleys are filled with trinket shops with merchandise on a towel or down trodden and dingy vegetable vendors with goods sprawled out on dirty cardboard or the pavement itself. Harajuku is a maze of retail.

I can’t count how many times Kelly and I have gone to a mall (or Target) out of boredom. Before I left we would go to Target so that I could pick up some essentials but it was really just an excuse to go somewhere other than my house. We never bought anything.



That was pretty much the case in Harajuku; though it didn’t have that vaguely evil feel of going to Target just for fun. We went in a lot of little shops. They sold all sorts of conventional clothing and ridiculous accessories and everything in between.

After enough blind turns down narrow and over cluttered alleys we came again to the main road. People lined the sidewalk on benches doing nothing. They just sat there and waited for something, If this was Korea they would have all been smoking or watching TV on their phones and a few would be drinking. But, obviously, Japan is not Korea. It is never any good to compare two countries because whatever similarities are usually either coincidence or the results of years of invasion.



A shine in Harajuku.



The streets of Japan have Korea beat. That is one thing I will say. Japan’s streets and sidewalks are immaculate. There are no garbage cans anywhere but still you would be very hard-pressed to find so much as a cigarette on the ground. It seems that smoking is pretty limited in Japan as frequently one comes across a sign that seems to prohibit smoking on various sides of the street. Korea doesn’t have any trash cans either but it makes up for that by having garbage thrown literally everywhere. Smoking is dirt cheap and in open season in Korea, thus everyone smokes like a chimney.

We walked for a time down that main road and came eventually to some monstrosity of a toy store specializing in Peanuts toys and various Hello Kitty trinkets. We spent a long time in that store with Kelly buying basically everything and myself staring at a train set.

After we walked further on and left the novelty of the shopping district of Harajuku behind. As the day wore on the streets became more and more crowded; something particularly evident in the mass street crossings that look at times like 2 opposing forces clashing in battle.

One of the things I really appreciate about places like Japan and Korea is that while they are at the forefront of technology and seemingly modernity, they are both undeniably ancient. It is not difficult to wander around places like Tokyo and be overwhelmed by the sheer number of people oozing pure style next to you at all times and the constant presence of concrete and glass. It is only in places like these where it is just as possible to turn a busy corner and find some worshipped relic of a time long before the dawn of the U.S.

That was the case in Harajuku. We walked on for a while until we took a random left, walked up an alley and were greeted by a couple of small red pagodas that served as an entrance to a giant pagoda. The place was quiet and removed from the sights of the busy street we had been on (if not the noise). There was a wide open lot with stone paths that led to the large pagoda and off to the sides. Scattered about were large and full trees and basins of burning incense.

Working with bamboo.

Except for the noise of the street the place was quiet save the sound of a few men in blue erecting an arbor made of bamboo. Off to the left side was a cluster of engraved stones and statues with bright yellow flowers or the roaches of burnt out incense. Beyond them lay what I imagine to be a grave yard of sorts with dozens of tall wooden planks painted with jet black Japanese characters. This was my favorite place of them all.

 



Read more...