Seoraksan Part 1: In which our hero tavels for a long time and loses his most valued posession

If I have learned anything about internal travel in Korea it is this: the news isn’t usually wrong when it predicts horrendous traffic.
After the eternity that was the duration of winter intensives finally ended, Korea was given a much needed vacation.  This was good news.  The overloaded class schedule and bouncing from school to school on Fridays without breaks had wrecked me.  I was looking forward to catching up on some sleep.
The plan, for myself and a couple of friends (Rick and Lauren) was to get from our respective homes in central Korea to the northeast.  We were making for Seoraksan National Park in Gangwon Province. 
One of the things that I will miss about Korea is that you are never very far from a mountain to hike on.  Even if it is not a very large mountain, there is usually some payoff.  Sure, Watchusett Mountain might offer some nice glimpses of Fitchburg and exotic New Hampshire, but the local hike here has a fortress that predates colonial America by a long ways. 
Seoraksan, it should be stated, is not a “local hike.”  It is almost as far from our cities as you can get.  What complicated this issue further was that we were attempting to get there on arguably the biggest travel weekend of the Korean Year.  Lunar New Year was the occasion of our vacation and it was the reason why everyone with a car in Korea takes to the road to reach their home villages and families that they left behind in on their way to urban modernity.  The result is that highways around major cities become something of a nightmare. 
The only other time of year that can compete with Lunar New Year is Chuseok.  We traveled during Chuseok too, but we had the benefit of a KTX (bullet train) that took us from Daejeon to our final destination for Gyeongju.  The KTX was a benefit we would not be enjoying for our relaxing Seoraksan vacation. 
Relaxing would also not be one of our enjoyments.
We would cross the peninsula via bus.  When I asked my coworkers how I might get from Cheongju or Daejeon to Seoraksan, Han informed me that we would have to switch busses a handful of times.  Further, she said that not only would we have to deal with the nightmare traffic, but we would also have to transfer bus stations at one point. 
This last part was what worried me the most.  Reading Korean is no problem.  Bus stations usually have destinations written in English.  What could be a problem was getting from one station to another in time to catch another bus.  Frankly, I was starting to recall the trip to Dacheon Beach in the summer.  I was wondering which one of us would be barfed on.
Han tried her best to simplify things.  Ara, the new teacher, did as well:
“I think you should just stay home.  Or you can just go to Songmisan (the local national park).”
This was actually a valid idea.  I wanted and still want to go to Songmisan.  I even meant to do so last weekend but I was sidetracked by eating lunch.
The thing is, when it comes to vacations I am stubborn.  I rarely budge from my initial plan and it is difficult for me to accept any compromises.  I don’t mean to say that I do not go with the flow and enjoy the unexpected- I am fine while I am ON vacation.  What I mean is that once I decided that I was going to Seoraksan, there was no way in hell that I wasn’t going to go to Seoraksan.  The complicated bus route and the potential 10 hour bus ride (it was ordinarily 4 or so hours) didn’t have the slightest impact.  In the end I conceded a day and we left on Thursday instead of Wednesday to avoid the bulk of the traffic.
The plan:
1. Head to Daejeon Wednesday and stay in my first of 3 motels. 
2. From Daejeon take 3.5 hour bus to Gangneum in the northeast.
3. Go from the intercity bus terminal to the express bus terminal (it could have been the other way around)
4. Take a bus from Gangneum to Sokcho, a bit to the southwest.  Once here, I was ready to call it a success.
5. Take a city bus to Seorak-dong, and find a motel in the national park. 

The reality was not much different from the plan save travel times.  I made it to Daejeon with no problems (like I’ve done many times before).  I stayed at the Sharp Motel near the bus terminal and, as always, it was awesome.  Rick and Lauren treated me to a dinner at TGIF so the day was a total success. 
The next day we woke up bright and early and met at the bus terminal (bright and early for hag won teachers is different from that of normal people: 9am).
The bus, according to the website left at 9:45am.  We then spent a couple of hours waiting around and drinking coffee counting down until 11:30ish when the bus actually left.
One of the benefits of being in Korea alone, is that more often than not nobody wants to sit with you on the bus.  On the rare instance when I am not put in a row with just one seat, the person assigned to sit next to me usually gets up and leaves once the bus starts rolling.  Maybe I should be insulted.  Maybe I should just stop showering at home so I can always sit alone on the bus.
So, for the entire 5 or so hours of the 3.5 hour bus ride, I stared out the window and spoke only to Ricky or Lauren when the guy on the bus TV did something weird.
Rick and I searched for food when the bus made a quick rest stop.  After getting on 3 busses because we failed to remember where our bus was parked we sat down and enjoyed our lunch.
It was called a kebab.  It was a skinny hotdog with spicy sauce wrapped in a soggy tortilla.  How I made it the rest of the way without crapping my pants, I do not know.
After a very long time the plains gave away to outcroppings of the Taebaek mountain range.  We came at last to a city bus terminal where we sat until the bus driver politely informed us to get off as we were at our destination.  It was here that I did the dumbest thing I have ever done.
I rushed out of the bus and stood on the sidewalk for a moment after the bus drove away.  I then realized that I had left a bag containing close to $2,000 worth of camera / lenses on the bus.  I sprinted after it but it was gone.
My joy for vacation was wracked with devastation.  If I wasn’t in shock I probably would have cried.  Not only was that camera important to me, but it was how I made the bulk of my income at home.  For a time I told myself that it was ok, I had to upgrade anyway, but it was all a lie. 
I would be the only moron on top of the mountain looking through the viewfinder and winding the film of a disposable film camera.
In a panic I called Han.  I felt bad for bothering her during the holiday but I saw not other option.  She was my Obi-Wan. 
For an hour things looked bleak.  Things looked real bleak.  She managed to get a hold of the bus company and eventually the driver.  She relayed the message to him that the camera had been left on the back of the bus.  He replied that there was nothing.  He would check the CCTV but he wasn’t hopeful.
“I am sorry Tom,” Han said.  I hung up the phone and felt ill. 
I was drinking coffee with Rick and Lauren in despair when Han called to tell me that they had found my camera, and if I could wait until 6pm, then I could pick it up at the company office upstairs.
Words can’t really describe my relief.  Oh, wait, yes they can: imagine losing your really expensive still camera / cheaper video camera / lens / etc. for an hour and then having them returned.  That is what it felt like.
So, camera bag firmly in hand, we embarked on the second to last bus of the night: Sokcho.  Luck was with us in that too, as we did not have to go to another bus station to get to Sokcho, as I had feared.
The way to Sokcho is interesting.  For one thing, the coastal road forces you to remember the conflict with North Korea.  Vast expanses of the shore are lined with barbed wire.  Here and there, there were manned guard towers casting halogen into the black sea under the moonlight.  According to the guidebook, there were several tank traps along this route to protect against invasion.
So, 10 hours or so after we left Daejeon, we stepped off the bus into the night of Sokcho at the base of Seoraksan.  There, we breathed in clean air for the first time in a long time.

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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!

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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.

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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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Japan: Part I

Shinjuku, Tokyo.

The next day we woke up refreshed. Scratch that. Kelly woke up refreshed. I didn’t wake up because I didn’t sleep. I simply ceased to stare at the ceiling. Planes have a way of reducing me mind to the rationality of child who swore that he heard something scuffling beneath his bed. Planes aren’t my thing.


That I ate a bunch of Dots and a Heath Bar right before bed probably played a significant role in it all, too.
Anyway, I did not die in the plane; nor did I lose my mind.

While the flight wasn’t entirely pleasant, and I wasn’t entirely relaxed, the 2 hours passed without any major issues. We boarded in Incheon amongst what seemed to be an entire battalion of American military guys with their camo bags. We found our seat in the middle row of seats. It wasn’t the ideal place and I felt on edge most of the way and more than a bit jumpy but that is what tends to happen when my rationality-barrier has been depleted by stuffiness and not enough sleep.

So, I kept my mind occupied the best that I could. After I released my armrest from the takeoff death grip I tried to focus on the TV. I watched a bit of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I don’t remember anything else because if I just sit back and watch things then my mind starts going to dark places. So, I spent about an hour and a half obsessively flipping through the music channels and heard California Girls by Katy Perry for what I think might have been the first time. I spent the last hour playing Hogs of War on my laptop and for that segment of time all was right with the world.

Narita International Airport, Japan

I get this odd sense of accomplished pride whenever I make it through immigration and set foot for the first time in a strange country. It seems like it wasn’t so long ago (and it really wasn’t) that I was awaiting the arrival of my first virgin passport. It was so empty, and it was so bland. Occasionally, while I have nothing to do, I will pull it out of my drawer in Korea and thumb through it. Obviously, every stamp is a memory and an adventure and all that clichéd but true stuff; but there is also a certain pride that goes along with it. I have a lot more of the world to see before I finally walk into my house in Shrewsbury but I have already seen places, met people, and had all these experiences that I never thought would actually happen a handful of years ago.

I changed 500,000 Won in Seoul and we began to blow through it immediately upon setting foot in Tokyo. Travel in Tokyo seems inordinately expensive when you currently live in a place that will take you across country for little more than 10,000 Won. Kelly, who had paid for and booked a hotel in the Shinjuku neighborhood of Tokyo, managed to get us aboard the airport limo that would drop us off in front of the Hotel Sunroute Shinjuku (or something like that). It cost us either 3,000 Yen each or for the two of us, I don’t really remember anymore, but either way 3,000 Yen has nothing in common with 3,000 Won. With Won, I tend to simplify and assume every 1000 is equal to about $1. The double conversions going on in my mind confused the hell out of me and I frankly have no idea how much anything actually cost. I think I spent $30 on paper in a gift shop.

Kelly and I have stayed in some phenomenally horrible hotels in the time that we have been together. There was the place in Hampton, NH that was maybe the size of a small dorm room with a crap bed and 1970’s faux wood paneling. There was the place in Lancaster, PA with the pool that “might be a bit short on chlorine” and was, in fact, totally green which made no difference to me because I jumped in anyway. So on and so forth.

The hotel in Shinjuku had a lobby. A lobby! It had a bunch of benches and sofas that sat around a fountain that glowed in the dim light. There were velvet ropes, luggage, elevators and a line of people in UNIFORMS behind a deep-dark wood counter. I never thought I would stay in anyplace with a genuine, matter of fact, lobby! The place also had a fancy restaurant / bar / café.

We didn’t do too much that first day except throw our bags on the floor and walk around.
Something I knew about Tokyo but failed to appreciate the truth of the fact is that Tokyo is huge. While Seoul is number two in the world as far as population, Tokyo comes in at number one by a pretty hefty margin.

The size is evident as soon as you set foot out the door. We walked around until the sun went down and noise and neon filled the night. Street crossings were like black and white exoduses and it took some work for Kelly and I not to get separated.

We stopped off at a dark little noodle house that was no bigger than my room with a couple of counters to sit at. The counter looked directly into the kitchen which was dark save for the flames of gas burners and the shadows of piles of fresh noodles that sat in a bowl next to a boiling pot. Metal containers held herbs, eggs and other ingredients.

We walked in pointing to photos on the wall and had already screwed up. Machines have already taken the jobs of waiters in Tokyo. The cook led us back into the night and pointed to a vending machine that sat beneath a sole light.

Kelly in Tokyo.

The machine had a few rows of photographs of various noodle dishes and the assorted sides they came with. So, with the guy standing there we inserted our money, hit a couple of buttons, took a seat at the counter at the kitchen and handed him our sheets of paper with our selections typed out.

A soba noodle dish with a savory pancake to boot for myself and an udon noodle dish with a bowl of what looked like vomit, but tasted amazing, for Kelly.

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Seoul: KHall Arrives

I spent a lot of the weekend a couple of weeks at Incheon Internation Airport. I turned up sometime around 5 with a rolling bag of clothes and electronic distractions and a backpack that held a smaller backpack that held my camera and lenses. It was like a really lame Matryoshka doll.


Whatever weak plan of action I stepped of the Cheongju - Incheon bus with involved checking into an airport hotel and ditching my bags. I was at the airport, meeting my girlfriend whom I have not seen in 7 months. The next day we would fly to Tokyo. I wanted to have a grand airport reunion and I didn’t want to be all hot and grimy from lugging around luggage for 3 hours or so before hand. I wanted to show off my new crappy prepubescent pubical-hair beard and slightly slimmer frame. I wanted her to come through immigration and see somebody who had adapted to life abroad. It’s hard to give the appearance of adaptation when you are pulling luggage, looking frazzled and ready to get the hell out.

KHall

Guess I should have actually made a hotel reservation.

On my own, I would have just squatted in the airport. I spent multiple days (not all at once) in Athens and about a solid day in Mexico City. But, Kelly was coming. Last time I saw her I was living off of a pretty low magazine wage and whatever I managed to scrape together with freelance work. I had decided that for the first time in my life, this was a no-expenses-spared sort of trip. It seems so long ago and another world away that I was ever so poor. It seemed so long ago and another world away since I had seen K Hall. I guess that was pretty much true.

In the end, I stood outside of immigration with my luggage sprawled on the floor around me. I waited as people came back home or stepped out to meet strangers holding signs. My favorite sign was taped to a pole: BOB SMITH: WALK STRAIGHT THROUGH THE DOORS TO THE BUS.

A bit earlier and further down the corridor I passed a man as he sobbed uncontrollably as his family looked on, not looking much better. I wondered how long he was leaving for or whether he was going to a hospital somewhere far away, or a funeral. I blocked it from my mind as I waited.

The most obvious difficulty in travel is the distance from loved ones. After a time it grows to be more than just a physical fact and a lesson in world geography. Time goes by and life continues on while we are gone; whether the place we are gone to is across the state or across the world. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily. It’s just different. It happens when you aren’t paying attention. There’s that hit of homesickness or that feeling of being so far away at the beginning of a trip but you adapt to it and you cope with it.

The person I was when I stepped through the same sliding doors I was waiting at now seems so different. I haven’t learned any massive life lessons and I haven’t had some huge philosophical growth, I just feel a little different. Growth through travel, I guess.

I have my own little world here. It’s temporary and the clock is always counting down on it, but it is an obvious truth. I have my friends here that bare little to no resemblance to my friends back at home. I have my habits, my little apartment that nobody from home had ever seen. I have this reality here that is so far removed from my reality in Shrewsbury, MA that my two lives don’t seem to really overlap. People at home, save regular phone conversations, stop being part of your day to day life.

That’s part of the reason why I was so nervous as I stood there waiting. It felt like that first date feeling in that battery acid seems to be pumping through your veins and that it feels nice and exciting but mostly you just want it to stop.

K Hall was the last person out of immigration. I was scared to see her. It seemed like it had been so long, despite talking regularly. Distance is hard. This trip had been a long time coming and I half expected that instead of actually stepping through the doors and into Korea (the one overlap in my past and present realities) she would vanish or at least be deported or something.

She wasn’t. She wheeled her red luggage around a crowd of people and over to me.

Sometimes you don’t realize how much you really miss your home until a piece of it drifts your way.



Anyway, we spent a night in the most expensive hotel we had ever stayed in together. It was an airport hotel that was 5 minutes from the airport. It was 5 minutes apparently if you sat on a plane going full speed and bailed after 5 minutes.

I tried to wow K Hall with my awesome knowledge of Korean formalities and greetings that starts with “hello” and basically ends with “thank you.” In my daydreams I imagined a gourmet dinner and hours and hours of conversation and stories. Reality wasn’t quite so dramatic but it was equally as nice. We watched The Office and America’s Funniest Home Videos in the hotel as Kelly fought the fatigue of traveling from Boston to NJ to Beijing to Korea while I ate a horrible cup of noodles with a toothbrush.



Things she brought me:

Dots

Everlasting Gobstoppers

Jujubees

Snyder’s Buffalo Sauce Pretzels

2 Heath Bars

A box of precooked bacon

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Chuseok

Chuseok. To the best of my knowledge it is a kind of Korean Thanksgiving. I tried to ask my students what Chuseok really was and what they would be doing but I didn’t get too much out of them. I should start wikipedia-ing this stuff. Perhaps this blog could be more than ramblings, violations of student-teacher confidentiality rules, and uninformed (and largely in factual) observations. But, I didn’t.

The Senecal apartment too early in the

morning

The vast majority of my students, when asked what they would be doing answered one of all of the following:

I will play with my cousins.

I will go to the hometown of my father.

I will eat songpyeon (a kind of rice-cake with sweetish fillings; which I incorrectly imagine as a weird jelly munchkin).

My coworkers tell me that it’s a harvest festival that occurs according to the lunar calendar. Surely, it has some decent history of traditions and customs but the important thing is that it is a time for family: both living and dead. Families make the trip home during Chuseok if at no other time if the year. Kids play with cousins they might not see regularly and adults catch up. Gestures are made towards those who have already passed. Tombs are cleaned and honored and food is left in remembrance.

Another Chuseok tradition is that Korea basically shuts down for a couple of days to the dismay of waygooks trying to take advantage of a significant time off from work.

Want to hear about a trip to what might be the most boring place in Korea and a night in what might be the creepiest motel I have ever stayed in? Keep reading.

In my defense, when I started planning a trip to Gyeongju nobody told me just how “quiet” Korea became. Sure, Han might have mentioned that some places might not be open and that travel via road might become tiresome (Seoul, a 2 hour trip in ordinary circumstances, can take somewhere between 15 - 20 hours). So, I assumed that maybe we would not be able to be so picky when it came time for bbq. Fine. It took some work but I booked train tickets from Daejeon to Gyeongju. There were three of us. Two of my best friends from the ‘bury are now teaching in Daejeon which is a short 50 minute bus ride away. Given that they have really just arrived and I never got around to getting them a wedding present and it was recently their first anniversary (god, one year ago I was trying to function at a wedding after working until 2am for the magazine and then being unable to sleep) I would drag them along. We would have a scenic train ride across the peninsula, see the sights, eat some food, watch TV, and have a grand ole time.

I should have just bought them a plate.

Rick and Lauren in front of a fake

burial mound.

We were out in the deserted streets of Daejeon before 7am. The place was a ghost town, and what’s more it was a dreary ghost town given that the weather had turned gray. Ordinarily at that hour there would be at least a few Koreans stumbling home from the bar but presently we had the city to ourselves.

A quick taxi took us to Daejeon Station where I picked up our tickets. The next day we would return via a train to Daegu and another to Daejeon. Poor Rick wasn’t given Friday off. As for myself, I would continue on to Daegu and spend a couple of nights there doing absolutely nothing productive.

The train to Gyeongju was just short of torture. It lasted somewhere close to three hours and while it went through some very beautiful terrain I was dead tired. Still, my inability to sleep in a vehicle and the occasional peel of thunder that comes as a KTX train passes by at 200mph kept my semi-coherent mind outside the window.

Sometimes life will have me believe that I am still at home. After 5 months I am well into the routine of wake up, go to work, go home, sleep, repeat. What was once exotic about Cheongju is not so any longer. The scenery outside of the cities reminds me that I am somewhere else.

Daejeon fell behind us as we traveled south. Cities became suburbs and those gave way to outpost towns. Then there was nothing but the mountains, rivers and rice patties. Grey weather gives way to deeper greens and high contrast. The mountains are always in the distance and about them clung a mist that stayed for the holiday.

If ever there was a time that Korea earned its name of “the land of the morning calm” it was then.

After a long time we were standing in the rain outside of a train station in Gyeongju.

Soon after we were in a cab as he took us to Bomun Lake Resort in search of a motel in the dreary mist. I was beginning to wonder about the damage to my bank account with a word like “resort,” but Korea proved me wrong.

Motel Sinla. The first warning should have been that the “l” and “a” were blacked out on the sign. Motel Sin. If you go to an abandoned Gyeongju on a grey and rainy day do not stay at Motel Sin. Just don’t. 80,000 won later (not a bad price for two rooms) and the manager was walking us through dark and abandoned corridors to show us our rooms.

Later on Rick and I made comparisons between Motel Sin and The Overlook Hotel from The Shining. The corridors were long and dark. The flip of a switch in my room revealed bizarre spill-stains on the walls. My bathroom door was cut a foot above the floor, and the stains found their way to the rug in the corridor. Our rooms were separated by an empty room. I was suddenly regretting my decision to have recently read Hell House.

What did we do in Gyeongju? We did basically the only thing there IS to do in abandoned Gyeongju on Chuseok in the rain. We walked.

Pagoda building at the Expo park.

Bomun Lake (which, as it turns out, is actually man-made) is a central point for many things that might be fun if they weren’t half staffed or outright closed. Around which are remnants of the World Expo, a place called Millennium Park, an amusement park and a couple of food-oriented folk villages.

Millennium Park was a bust. It was open but the cost of 17,000W a person and the piping church music coming from behind the artificially ancient walls was a bit of a turn-off. Their photos would have you believe that they are something of a themed replica kingdom with trick horse-rider-acrobat guys. The rain made us believe that we would be paying 17,000W for closed attractions and canceled performances.

A roll of crappy Kimbap later and we were staring at a pagoda cut into the middle of a tall building inside of the Expo park, unwilling to pay admission to walk around inside. What was open? There were no signs and there were few people. I try not to cheap out when I am traveling but the place seemed dead.

We decided to walk around Bomum Lake. It didn’t seem too far and further down we would pass through the two folk villages. We had nothing to do but kill time.

My dependence on maps has led to trouble before. I have a tattoo on my forearm of a map that led to one of the most ridiculous and surreal experiences of my life. I should learn my lesson at some point. Point is Bomum Lake is not very small. A long stretch of our walk in the increasing rain was on the side of the road with our umbrellas (Rick didn’t have one and he was too far soaked to use ours- gotta be rational about these things) held out so that the giant black and yellow spiders that are everywhere wouldn’t get us.

Arachnaphobia.

So we walked and walked and we went from damp to freezing and soaked feet until we turned a corner and made the unanimous decision to take a cab before we were hit by a car or killed by spiders.

The folk villages were all closed save for a convenience store.

In the end, the only thing we really did on our vacation was eat and watch TV. It might sound lame but we don’t have TV’s. I haven’t had regular access to one in 5 months now so sometimes it is emotionally satisfying to flip for an hour or ten every now and again.

When we finally found a restaurant that was open we had ourselves a Chuseok feast. On the menu: Donkatsu (fried pork cutlet)

Bibimbap (rice, veggies, spicy sauce, fried egg)

A smaller shabu-shabu (beef that cooks in amazing broth)

Rice

Gamja Jeon (a type of Korean potato-pancake)

Daenjang Jigae (a fermented bean soup - amazing)

Kimchi

Spicy bean sprouts

Cucumber Kimchi

A million other things.

Life was good.

------------------------------

Recently (as in the past 2 years) I have been in a horror kick. At one point in time I was a 5 year old girl in the body of a 20 year old guy in that I was incapable of watching anything scarier than Sleep Hollow. Then I took a horror cinema class at Suffolk and I suddenly realized the girl from The Ring wasn’t actually going to kill me dead at night. At 24 Proctor St. all we watched was horror. The last book I finished (oh how I love you, Kindle) was Hell House. It was a really well written book about a severely haunted house and people who are dumb enough to sleep in separate rooms.

For the first time in a while, I was creeped out. Motel Sin is a fine place but given the weather, it being cut off by a ring of trees in the mist, and the crow that I found sitting on the railing of my balcony; I was a little unnerved. It also seemed as though we were the only people in the motel.

Motel Sinla.

I locked the door to the hallway and then closed the door into my room because obviously a serial killer or ghost is incapable of opening two doors. My window was open and I was watching a movie about a tsunami hitting Busan. Korean disaster movies are different in that they are HORRIBLY depressing. Basically, everyone dies in long drawn out scenes of crying and saying goodbye to loved ones.

At some point somebody in the hotel opened a door that let up a draft and a change in pressure.

I heard a click in the door of my room. I was sitting there with a giant beer as another click sounded and the door shot open and banged into the wall.

I wish I could say that I did something proactive as the door bounced back other than swear but I can’t. A few seconds later I mustered the courage to stand up, throw a courtesy punch into the darkness (for good measure) and push the door as hard as I could into the jams so as to avoid soiling the bed in the middle of the night.

That was my Chuseok. I spent 2 nights in Daegu but did nothing but eat fast food and watch TV. I’ll spare you the details except that I watched the following movies:

Sin City (good)

Wanted (OK)

The Bourne Identity (amazing)

The Bourne Supremacy (good)

The Bourne Ultimatum (awesome)

Jurassic Park (obviously awesome)

Busan Gets Tooled by the Ocean (depressing as hell)

Resident Evil 2 (horrible)

And sadly more…



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A New Semester

Well, it seems that the powers that be at my school have settled on having 4 teachers for the foreseeable future and almost certainly until I hit the road.

On paper, having four teachers (Han, Boram, a newer teacher named Hajin, and myself) seems pretty solid. In truth we really only have around 40 to 50 kids. The thing is that being a private academy our classes are based on what kid comes at what time and how many days a week. Most kids come in every day at the same time. Some come in most days and others come in at all different times.

In the past I have had problems with somebody at school dumping a class into my lap with less than a minute before it began and then looking shocked when I appeared to be a little flustered. At times I have to remind my coworkers that I am not a proper teacher and it takes a significant amount of preparation to even function at a marginally competent level in class. In fact, even with preparation there are times when it is embarrassingly obvious that I have lost my train of thought and am writing on the board incessantly just to buy myself time.



Both hands visible.  Working on the most
complicated craft on earth.

There are times when I must confess to being a pretty phenemonenaly bad teacher. Do I feel bad about this? No. This is likely to be the only time in my life I am ever employed as such. I will not be signing on for a second year (which my boss asks me about once a week) and it is nothing I lose sleep to. I do my best and sometimes it works out great. Sometimes not so much.

There are notable editions and missing faces in my school at present. We have a new little boy whom we affectionately call Hands-in-his-pants Boy. There isn’t really much description needed. He is about 6 years old and if his hands aren’t otherwise occupied he usually is using Han’s compact mirror to apply makeup or put his hair in a ponytail. A few kids are gone. One of them being the Angry Girl. I was the last person to have her in class. For a time it was a one on one class but recently a new student was tossed into her class.



How do I describe this kid? He is incredibly skinny with long hair. I would say he was quirky as eccentric implies some significant age but he constantly wears this old-man fly fishing hat so I will go with eccentric. We call him Skinny Boy despite Bat-Shit Crazy Boy being more accurate.

Skinny boy and his class.  He is in the hoodie next to his friend:
The Chair.

He has the attention span of a moth in the void but he is smart enough to keep on everyone’s good side and understands enough English to intentionally make me laugh. In his new class the three of them (Angry Girl had since left) were saying something like “Let’s play computer games.” A second boy would say “OK, after let’s play soccer,” to which Skinny Boy would in theory say “OK. After, let’s play baseball.” Instead he looked at me and stone cold said:

“But I am not OK,” and through a fake temper tantrum.

Another time I was doing “Eanie Meanie Minie Moe.” Thin Boy had run to the back of the class like he does every ten seconds. I pointed to him and he threw up his hands and dropped dead after apparently being shot.

Point is, Angry Girl had one class with him and decided that it was not going to happen. So, she left. No goodbye.

The fact that she has called and texted me every day for the past two days is a little reassuring / completely creepy.

My 2:30 class is with a 9 year old we call the Missing Boy because he went missing for a solid 3 hours after getting on the wrong bus and getting out god knows where. The school was in full blown panic mode at this and his mother called up every 5 minutes to scream us out. When asking if it was our bus driver’s fault Han told me that it was all of our faults as we had given him this ridiculously random schedule (actually he comes in at 2 every day but Friday when he comes in at 1). To this I would like to submit that nobody tells me jack about anything and that therefore eliminates any guilt on my part.

He turned up eventually and his mother kept him enrolled. It is very difficult to keep his attention for more than 2 minutes at a time and he frequently pulls out a bouncy ball or Pokemon comic book in the middle of class. His new class mate is rocking some pretty horrible ADD which I do not have the know how to deal with so that class is almost a complete loss as far as learning anything significant.

Older Girls Conversation.  Sorry Kid.

I have an older boy (no nickname) whose class I have forgotten about 3 of the 4 times I have had it which means that he spent too much time staring at me as I went bombing into the class with my book and no lesson plan.

My new favorite class is my Older Girls Conversation Class which is a girl and boy. In the boy’s defense I wrote the name on the folder before he was enrolled in the school. In my defense he acts like a 87 year old woman 95% of the time so I haven’t yet bothered to rewrite the class name. These two kids are 13ish and advanced enough so that by the time I get to their class (they are my last class on my two worst days) I breathe a sigh of relief at not having to put such a huge effort in making myself understood. It’s tiring sometimes to have to put such a continuous effort into being understood. So by the time I see him complaining that he is cold and putting so much effort into his coughing one might mistake him for a chain-smoking old man, and her looking like she wants to deck him, I know the hard part of my day is over.

There is one class that has caught me completely off guard as far as the capabilities of a bunch of little kids driving me nuts.

Little Kid Conversation. It started off well enough. It even had some of my favorite kids. There was Rock Paper Scissors Boy, this really loud girl (I actually know their names but they’re all Kim’s and their full names would take a page, so I’ll call her Loud Girl), this adorable girl that looks like a rabbit, a new quiet kid, and this kid who has a huge problem with pronunciation (I took years of French and I can appreciate this). All at once everything hit went down the tube.

I was too nice. They, particularly the cute little girl, walked all over me. For a few classes it took a lot of work to keep them in their seats and focused. Then I got mad at the cute girl for NEVER paying attention and trying to read comic books while everyone else repeated my every word (oh the power!). Then the boy with the bad pronunciation started to act up. They would routinely get up and try to play games on the computer so I stopped being nice. I started yelling and giving homework, hoping to put an end to the plague.

Didn’t work. My classes with them descended into anarchy. The boy threw a hissy fit after I gave him a slightly torn photocopy. The cute girl wouldn’t participate as she was mad at me for denying her stickers. The Loud Girl just wouldn’t shut up and what is worse RPS Boy turned on me. He shocked me. I’d always pictured him as an ally as he always seemed to yell at kids to shut up for me.

The current bane of my existance.

Monday was what I hope to be rock bottom. I tried to play a game. Somehow RPS Boy and the cute little girl got into a tug of war over a spay bottle. I reached in to try and muscle it from both of them, they ended up ripping off a bunch of skin from my thumb and I sprayed them both in the face and gave them all homework.

Mature? No. Effective? No. Only one kid did the homework.

My current plan is to blindside them with kindness. Today we studied for 20 minutes and then watched 10 minutes of America’s Funniest Home Videos and then gave them all pennies. They now think I am the greatest again.

And that’s my schedule for the foreseeable future for the new semester. This doesn’t actually mean too much as I am averaging one new class a week and generally don’t know what is going on anyway. Tomorrow is my last day of class before the Chuseok holiday for which I am beyond excited. Hello My Name is Earl!





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