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.

 



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Korea vs Argentina

It seems that each night I lay down to sleep and each morning I rise to the same sound: the vuvuzelas of South Africa. Invariably as I walk to the convenience store down the road for a triangle Kimbap I pass the restaurant with the TV hanging in the patio and there is somebody watching some team whose name he might not know play some other team from a country he has never heard of. On my way to the grocery store after school always there is a crowd at the bar next door and always that buzzing theme of the World Cup.


A long time ago I spent a little while in the mountains of northern Greece, a stones throw from the Albanian border. One night we sat in the reception building of our little village tired and dirty. The first part of the day, for me at least, had been spent digging holes into the heavy clay in the rain as it flirted with the idea of turning into slow. After a lunch of bean soup I had spent all afternoon with a lead pipe drawing back and thrusting it into the clay. Again and again I did this as two Greeks watched me sweat in the freezing air of the new winter. My arms jarred with each rock I hit beneath the grass and as the hours wore on my muscles burned just to carry the clay-caked thing onto the next spot. All to put in the flimsiest and worst piece of crap fence made out of sticks and thin nylon rope.

If you ever find yourself in the Forest Village of Kedros enjoy the scenery: I planted the trees and I put the holes in the ground for the fence. If the trees have washed away and the fence is no more, well, just don’t tell me.

On the night after my first tango with the lead pole I watched soccer with Greeks long after most of my fellow volunteers had left for out freezing hostel. Greeks love soccer. I no longer remember who was playing but those who lived at Kedros seemed to have something at stake. My friend Axilleas barely spoke English but he bridged the gap by buying me a beer from the bar at the far end of the room. I returned the favor and we sat on big leather chairs almost unable to move.

The fire next to the TV both lit and warmed the place into the waxing morning. I didn’t know what team was who but I watched the game until the end. Each goal bought on cheers or screams that threatened murder. Men fresh out of the military with heads still shaved and scarred at the hand of some butcher of a barber lit cigarettes straight from the tap of burning logs.

I never really knew who won that game. What I know is that I forced myself into the freezing and black night, the path barely illuminated by the moon’s light that bounced off of the wild mountains of the Tzourmeka range so that I might get a few hours of sleep before the morning came and with it brought utter agony to my body.

The next day was still a nightmare. Again I did battle with the pole and if I was miserable Axilleas looked like he might drop dead any minute. Hangovers tend to be magnified by hard labor with little food in the cold at high altitude. I remember asking him when he had finally returned to the hostel and he said it had been sometime near 4am after another game. I tried asking him why in the name of god he had stayed up so late given we were doomed to 6 more days of these 6am wake up calls.

He looked at me as though he didn’t understand the question. He did understand the question but he couldn’t fathom why I bothered to ask it in the first place.

“Thomas,” he said, “because it is football and because it is Greece.”



Jump two years or more into the future and there I sat in a taxi trying to cut through Cheongju traffic that was as thick as the haze that clung to the city. The weather had taken a turn towards oppressive- the temperature was in the 90’s and the humidity was monstrous enough to bring the haze to the ground. Indeed the air was suffocating.

Everywhere pedestrians, cars and madmen on scooters rushed to where they might watch the game. Friends of mine headed to the stadium which was jammed full enough to suspend disbelief that they were watching a broadcast and not the Korea vs. Argentina game in person. Cheongju’s streets flowed red with the homeland pride.

A 10 minute trip to Albert’s other school took over 30 minutes. We spent much of the ride in stand still traffic watching scooters and bikes risk narrow passages when they didn’t abandon the road all together and take to the sidewalks, pedestrians be damned. The cab was full. I sat in front while Han and Boram sat in the back. Albert, holding three giant boxes of fried chicken and three big bottles of Pepsi sat in the middle. He was as giddy as a very well dressed school girl.

Albert had canceled night classes. I was the last person to find out (about an hour before we left) and had insisted that everyone at his schools watch the game together.

“We are,” Albert always says, “a social family.”

As it was, the guys at the other school had apparently joined the countless red army marching to the stadium and I was the only guy there apart from my school director.

So, we sat at desks in a classroom that had been occupied an hour earlier by students anxious (or forced) to learn the English language. It now contained 5 Korean girls giggling in the back row, Albert hooking the antenna to the computer so that we could watch the game on the giant whiteboard, a clueless foreigner, and an absurd amount of fried chicken.

The moment the game began all classroom-appropriate behavior ceased to exist. Korean girls can scream very loud. Once the ball was in motion there was a constant chatter of shrieks, commentary and blood curdling cheering. Albert had dragged in a great leather armchair in which to sit right in front of the game. Whether we were there or not Albert could have cared less.

Argentina scored first to screams. Had we been quiet I am sure that all of Cheongju could be heard around us. We weren’t quiet though. Albert swore, the girls sounded like they had just been stabbed in the spine and I dropped my chicken.

Soon after the Older Receptionist and Albert’s wife showed up with a few more goodies.

Pepsi wasn’t enough to drink, I guess, because they came in with 30 beers and doled them out as the game played on.

So, there I was: watching Korea take on a powerhouse while eating fried chicken and drinking beer in school. Sometimes I have to laugh at where my life has taken me. Albert would occasionally stand up and without saying a word tap his beer can against my own in some silent toast and step over to the window and smoke a cigarette. If he were a high school kid in a bathroom he would have been suspended; but he isn’t: he is Albert. He does whatever he damn well pleases.

A short time later we watched as Korea danced around the Argentinean goal in the last seconds before the first half ended. There was a kick and-- the ball wasn’t even in the net yet when I saw Albert propel himself into the air, twist around, suck in air and let it out in an eardrum shattering scream/growl before his feet even hit the ground. While all of Korea erupted my attention had been taken from the game. I was wondering if Albert was going to eat me, or if he had chosen this moment to turn into some sort of hip Korean demon. I was wondering if maybe I had wet my pants.

The game went on and Korea lost. Later on, Albert’s wife was driving us back to our neighborhood. I sat in front as his wife laid on the horn while watching another soccer game on the navigational system / TV / really, really bad idea. Han was in back with Boram. Half sitting and half squatting was the Older Receptionist who had taken the unopened beers and was planning to drink her sorrow into a hangover. Albert sat with his face pressed against the window.

“Thomas,” said Albert, “I think that I am going to cry.”



Korea will likely not be a contender in the end, but for the time being Korea is galvanized. Each day I wake up and walk out my door to that omnipresent buzz. Koreans walk around as though they are stretched out a bit too thin, but there is a national pride involved that we in the States see only in the Olympics. In the States LA rioted because they beat the Celtics, Melissa Snelgrove was shot in the eye by a non-lethal projectile and soon died in the riots that broke out after a Red Sox victory.

But here there is nothing but unity and a bond. Amidst threats of war with the North, even my coworkers spoke with brotherly pride when North Korea denied a shut-out game to Brazil.

I don’t expect that I will ever see Axilleas again, but all of this excitement and pride has me imagining him working at whatever it is that he works at with one hell of a month-long hangover.


What I ate today: Kimchi mandu, rice, bean sprouts, plain old mandu, tortila chips, salsa (score!)

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South Korea vs. Greece

I come from a place that, with very few exceptions, does not pay very much attention to soccer. Why is this? I don’t know. It seems that the vast majority has spent a long time playing youth soccer; I know I did. Every year my parents signed me up for soccer regardless of how much I complained. My skills never developed beyond that of kicking a ball as hard as I could. Where it went I never was in much control of. During games that seemed to take up way too many early weekend hours I would generally just wail the ball in the general direction of the other goal. I never had any hope that I would ever get a goal, I just more or less wanted to get the ball away from me. I kicked the ball so it would be somebody else’s problem.


My soccer team did pretty well one year despite the fact that I was on the team. We were in the “Shrewsbury Championship” and I single handedly lost that game. The other team had a corner kick that was headed in my general direction. For some stupid reason I felt the sudden and uncharacteristic need to be impressive and tried to hit the ball with my head. I connected and the ball took a funny hop right over our goalie and into the net. It really was a perfect shot and it was my only goal.

Another time I found myself in a one on one shuffle to get possession of the ball. I was young and scared of the ball and I just wanted it to be over. I remember twisting my body and changing the dynamics of the action so now I had more control of the ball and the other player was at my back. Why the next thing happened I don’t know. Maybe it was nerves or maybe it was excitement but the second I got control of the ball and the other player fell into my back and I let fly the loudest fart of my young life. I remember kicking the ball away and looking back at the kid hoping he didn’t notice but there he stood in hysterics. It was the best soccer play of my life.

South Korea DOES care about soccer and it is not their general practice to fart on their opponents. A few days ago South Korea took on Greece in their first matching in the World Cup.

Over the past couple of weeks, Korea has become consumed with World Cup fever. Each day leading up to that game there would be more red shirts on the street and bars seemed to fill with the red devils. When Saturday finally arrive it seemed rightfully so to be the quiet before the storm.

I watched most of the game via live stream in my apartment. The moment the teams took the field the video became completely unnecessary. When South Korea came out all of Korea rumbled. Each attempt on a goal was a crescendo of muffled screaming and pounding. When Korea scored the place simply erupted.

There was panic in the reactions to attempts made by Greece. Often there could be heard sudden shrieks and Korean obscenities coming from the apartments above my own. At one point I opened the sliding door of my terrace and you could hear the commotion on the balcony of the restaurant a block or so away.

At some point later in the game I went for a walk. If the sound of satellite crowds in my apartment was impressive, the sound on the Korean streets was amazing. I walked through back streets that would have been deserted or otherwise populated by drunks; but everywhere a kid ran across the street of families hurried back to whatever TV they were watching. Bars were jammed chock full while other restaurants were dead, the only light coming from the glow of a tiny TV surrounded by waiters and cooks that didn’t mind the slow night.

In a dark side street that brings you to the main drag and then to Downtown individual apartment complexes erupted in rapid succession. Korea took the victory and the red devils poured out restaurants and bars on their way to other bars. Cars drove by wailing on their horns and every which way red light-up headbands flickered in the night.

I spoke with Sun Young on the phone. While she wanted Korea to win she admitted to hoping that Greece would continue on for another round. We spent so little time in those mountains but there will always be a connection she said.

So, I walked home with a bunch of food that I didn’t need surrounded by a sea of red. It reminded me of living in downtown Boston in October 2004.

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Itaewon

I have been to some pretty shady places in my life but Itaewon takes the cake. I laid my head on a pair of shoes on the floor of the Grand Hyatt at 4 something in the morning and waited for sleep that would never come. It had been a long day.

It started with a 2 hour bus ride from Cheongju to Seoul. Larry sat beside me as I stared out the window after I giving up on a quick nap. The night before was spent at an outdoor bar in downtown Cheongju. Morning came too soon as it usually does after such nights.

An alley market in Seoul.

After passing beyond Cheonan the bus raced faster and faster to the northern megatropolis that I had seen in so many travel shows. The green hills and mountains that follow you always here gave way to gray buildings that had sprung from the land and cut into the yellow smog-clouds.

Seoul is a big place. Seoul is a monstrously big place. It blows the population of New York out of the water despite being dangerously close to the guns of the North. It might be fair to say that Korea is a country based around Seoul as a disproportionately huge percentage of the population lives within its limits.

After the bus dropped us off at the express terminal, Larry and I made our way to the subway. Here, not for the first time and probably not for the last, I was following Larry like a toddler on a child-leash; I was completely useless in navigation. It was the best I could to simply keep up and not get caught and swept away in the currents of black hair that rushed about us.

We boarded one train and then another that took us to our destination of Itaewon.

That evening we were to be guests of Larry’s friend Lucy who made the occasional escape from life to the Grand Hyatt that sits atop a great hill and so overlooks the city line of Seoul. On this occasion she was awaiting the arrival of her brother who had been held up in Japan.

The entrance to a market district
in Seoul.

The first sight of Itaewon is startling. On what seemed to be the main drag cutting off bustling side streets there was the blinding and jarring sight of white skin, black skin, blonde hair and every shape of eyes. Itaewon is a Mecca for expats in Seoul, and for this it is the home to some of the most dynamic scenes this peninsula has to offer.

We meandered through the main drag and everything was so familiar. In a strange sort of way, the things that we have grown accustomed to at home had become exotic to all of us now residing in Korea. I had seen McDonalds here and there, but here was a Subway and a Quizno’s right next to each other. There was an Outback Steakhouse and signs announcing the soon-to-arrive Taco Bell. No Moes, though.

The people and places of Itaewon seemed to be worth the trip alone.

We walked past Thai joints, a Mexican place and countless vendors selling everything you could ever want and stuff you could never need. There were thousands of socks and stands selling shirts that were so inappropriate that even I had trouble reading them.

We turned a corner and began to walk up the steepest hill that I had ever seen a car drive up and shortly decided that we would never make it to the Hyatt at the top. This hill, with no exaggeration, rivaled that of Mt. Wachusett at home.

If ever I was impressed by a cabbie’s driving skills, this was it. In a manual, this guy negotiated hairpin turns, uneven road levels and some pretty ridiculous graded roads that were not wide enough for two cars at once all the way up until we were let off to wander our way to a room on the 8th floor.

I have never stayed in a place like the Hyatt. I can take that statement further and say that I will probably never stay in a Hyatt. Sure, that night I would be sleeping in a Hyatt but that was as non-paying, unauthorized trespasser. Still, the place exudes of colonial retreats and unattainable wealth. On the back side of the lobby is a wall of windows that look on the eternally hazy sight of Seoul. Down a flight of stairs and through the spa are the indoor and outdoor pools.

Pools are important to me. I can and have stayed in truly horrible motels only because they had a giant hole in the ground full of chemically induced clear water. These pools: my god! Inside was a contoured and curvy pool set with rock. Outside and surrounded by deep green grass and a couple of open air lounges was a massive pool decorated with an inlaid grid beneath the water.

“Hotel Rwanda?” Larry said. It was true, you had to wonder if any working Korean in Itaewon or anywhere else ever had the means to visit a place like this.

Traditional masks in Itaewon.

Another taxi took us past a military wedding party, down the hill and let us out onto that main drag. Larry, Lucy and I wandered to dinner where three incredible hamburgers and three very stiff drinks cost about 70,000W, which doesn’t translate to anything reasonable in U.S. currency.

Nearly a year without real beef, I am told, will make you do crazy things for the taste of a genuine hamburger.

Soon after we walked for a time to be accosted every ten feet by shady men offering custom suits and leather. With the setting of the sun, we met up with a girl named Katie and were off to Incheon to greet Lucy’s brother and take a taxi back to Itaewon for a night on the town.

There is no quick way back to Itaewon and there is no cheap way back. Indeed, if we didn’t find a taxi van we would have had to pay two taxi fares, as it was the van cost nearly $100.

Itaewon changes at night. Drastically.

Cart vendors for the most part disappear, to be replaced by Soju tents and kebab stands that pollute the air with intoxicating smells of afar and florescent lights that glow in the smoky haze. With nightfall, everything genuine or Korean about this place seems to flee into the hills.

Where as Cheongju or Cheonan nights see the school teachers out and about, Itaewon is the hub of vice for US Military personnel from the base at the edge of town. They come in the hundreds and they come with determination. Hard at work and hard at play.

An alley of Itaewon.

I do not begrudge the military their fun because god know what is to come with the North threatening open war, but it is hard to think what this place might have been like before they arrived. Korea is new to the realm of developed countries and Itaewon seems to be one of those places that was forced to sell its soul for the business.

We started the night off at a crowded bar, sweating even beneath an industrial fan. While westerners mingled and flirted and tried their luck with every girl around, we played asinine drinking games that all but assured that we would not be bothered.

At 1am the place died down fast and we were suddenly left with only a handful of small groups drinking at the bar. We set off in search of another spot and soon found ourselves wandering the night.

The air was saturated by laughter, shouting and slurred speech and the ground was covered in garbage. We stopped at a hole in the wall for Turkish gyros and were bumped around on the sidewalk as we ate; we stood in the way of everyone as they rushed from one drink to the next.

We passed bars and clubs of every sort. Music blared as people in every manner of dress and lack thereof passed us by. On the recommendation of two questionable girls we walked to the second floor of a building and walked into a bar that was barely worth the circle around the tables we made before we walked right back out again.

We passed through doors flanked by armed men in utility vests. It hip hop club that served us horrible Jack and Cokes as we watched the smoky dance floor bump and grind. The elevated stage was apparently reserved for those that were too cool or too bad to smile as they shouted along to songs raps that pulsed with the strobes. We left with another layer of sweat and grime.

As the night wore on we struck out again and again until any buzz we had had turned into plain fatigue. We found ourselves at the junction of the night and morality. As people questioned their willingness to go on we looked about the hills to our side and behind us.

At our side was one of the few openly gay districts of Korea. It is called Homo Hill. Behind us was Hooker Hill. No explanation needed.

Truth be told, dirty and grimy and sleazy as Itaewon is, there was something familiar about it. Itaewon has the feeling of every lawless frontier town in any Western and bares a remarkable resemblance to every Pirate movie representation of Tortuga.

In the end, the night ended here. Lucy and her brother went back to the hotel and the rest of us drank beer outside of a convenience store watching a group of hammered French argue and mumble. We walked down the street one last time as the MP’s began to make their rounds to at least feign control and enforcement of a 3am curfew.

So, at 4am I laid down beneath a table at the Hyatt with horrible heartburn, shoes for a pillow and an extra T-shirt as a blanket. Outside the night was just beginning to wind down. Those that remembered where they were from returned or else made a bed on the curb.

The next day the streets were as clean as ever and men peddling custom suits returned as though the night before was just a fading fever dream.

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