The soul of Seoul (funny pun is funny): KOREA!

Korea was sooo much fun! I kind of love that country. I don’t know, I’m kind of thinking I should have taken it instead of Japanese. It just makes so much more sense. It’s definitely more of my style. And it’s much more laid-back and kind of dirty, but in a good way. And people are very outgoing, and love foreigners it seems. And NO KANJI. It’s just a PHONETIC ALPHABET! How amazing is that? It’s still kind of a weird system of writing, because you stack the letters on top of each other depending on their combination, but after you get that down, you’re DONE! Whereas for Kanji, the pain just keeps going and going and going…
Also, the political situation is more interesting over there (obviously, since it borders the only REALLY closed nation on the planet). And it’s also more rare a specialty. Dammit. Anyway, it was a blast.

I managed to fly without dying, so that was a plus. We noticed immediately on the plane that Koreans are much louder and seemingly happier. The guy next to us went into a weird praying mode/chanting before we took off. Seoul is really different from Tokyo. People are actually human acting there, like laughing in the streets, screaming, honking, getting wasted (we saw like 3 gallons of vomit on the floor of one train), etc. Also, the ground is really dirty. It’s kind of like New York City. The place we were staying, called the Bong House (off station 420), was really hilarious. The host guy was REALLY friendly, in kind of a crazy way. He called me his little brother, and was like “I LIKE YOU!” and “You so handsome!” And then he massaged my shoulders randomly and gave me hugs all the time. Once when I bent over, he smacked my ass. And then, I got a great photo of him trying to kiss me. He would always be like “Oh, you like it!” Sometimes he held my hand. It was a little uncomfortable, but it was funny anyway. He even jokingly hit on a bunch of the girls and would hug them as well. It’s REALLY strange, and such a contrast to people in Tokyo. I can’t count the number of times that people approached us and asked us things or just said hi. I actually noticed throughout my trip that friends hold hands all the time, even guy friends! That’s something I never saw before. After we arrived, we went to drop our stuff off, and then we went to a restaurant. The dude walked us around and showed us where to eat, and then he translated the entire menu and ordered for all of us. After I ordered, he was like “YOU ARE MY FAVORITE!” Hilarious. At one point, he was describing a dish to one of my friends, and he was like “it’s beep in stew.” In Korean, they don’t have the ‘F’ sound, so they replace it with P. I knew this, and was kind of wanting to tell my friend somehow, but she kept being like “What’s beep? Is beep tasty?” And finally he managed to get some kind of F sound out and she understood. I laughed about that a lot after he left. Also, in a later meal, our waitress came up to my friend (who is a vegetarian), and was like
“You want pork?” And my friend was like
“NO, no pork, please!”
“Then how you eat food?”
“Without pork?”
“You can’t eat this with chopsticks. I bring you pork.”
“Ohh, fork!”
Also, later that night, we spotted an old Korean lady walking through a crowd going “beep beep, beep beep, beep, beep,” and I wondered if she was pretending to be a car, or if she was just seeking out some juicy beef.
The food was SO AMAZINGLY CHEAP OMG. Like, my first huge meal was less than 2 dollars. It was about 1.50 dollars at some restaurants. In Japan, it would have been about 20 dollars, I bet. It was really spicy though, but amazingly delicious. The living situation at first was really interesting. We were in a hostel, sharing bathrooms with a bunch of people. It wasn’t too bad, but very cheap, so not high class living. Ugh, you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet in Korea, you have to put it in the trash can. That kind of weirds me out. You could trace our journey through Seoul by looking for the clogged toilets (I’m traveling with girls). And the bathrooms in general are funky. The shower is basically on top of the toilet, so you are navigating around the toilet while showering, and the entire floor becomes a pool by the end. And the toilet gets really wet and grimy.
Also, I noticed in Korea, that there’s a large military presence. Apparently every male has to serve for at least 2 years in the military, so they are kind of everywhere. It’s all North Korea’s fault.
Anyway, after the first night, we went to the Korea War Memorial (which is ironically right across from the Ministry of Defense), and then off to an all-day market. Markets were pretty intense, you had to haggle everything and people were very rude/pushy. The shopkeepers would always try to rip us foreigners off, so that was tough to avoid. I didn’t really end up buying much, besides Kimchi chocolate (spicy) and some metal chopsticks (which is what they use there instead of wooden). There was actually more to buy for me on the street near the hostel, which was amazing. They had Red Mango, which is the parent of the American chain Pink Berry (it was originally Korean). Two of my friends were completely and utterly obsessed with it. They would sing lullabies to their bowls, and order a large bowl every time. That night, we attempted to see some Sakura trees that were supposed to be lit up, but we got lost and cold. Then the next day, we went to another smelly market, and then an intense mall. I can’t really remember much else.
One of the major highlights of the trip, was going to the DMZ. I had never really seen that kind of thing before, so I found it pretty interesting. First, we stopped at a park where families split by the North-South divide were allowed to meet every couple of years. Then we went on to see a bunch of other interesting places, like the Bridge of No Return, Freedom Bridge, Freedom Village, etc. Going to the Joint-Security Area was the best part, though. We had to have a briefing before we got there, where we signed a paper saying we accepted responsibility in the case or our deaths, and we had a military escort the entire way down to the JSA. The dress code was very strict, and we weren’t allowed to point or make any movements. On the way to the conference room, we were instructed to not stop, no matter what. So we walked out there (the urge to be like “HEY GUYS” was pretty strong, but I resisted). The military escorts were really intense, and didn’t move a muscle. They had these intense sunglasses on, and were trained to just look intimidating to the North Korean guards. Inside the conference room, we got to stand on North Korean soil (booyah, I’ve been there now). But we weren’t allowed to exit the conference room, because we’d probably get shot. Once we got far enough away, I started playing photo tag with one of the North Korean soldiers. I got some photos of him photographing us. It was pretty awesome. Apparently, it’s because they take photos of us and use them in propaganda to sell to the public to say how ugly or disgraceful we are. They are basically just waiting for us to do something stupid, so they can photograph and use it (that’s why the dress code was so severe). The building in front of us on the North Korean side was pretty imposing, but apparently it’s just for show (like, it’s just a shell, it doesn’t really have an interior). Also, they built the world’s tallest flag, in a very “mine’s bigger than yours” response to South Korea’s flag. But one of the interesting things about the tour was how apparent it was that the South wants to reunite with the North. The guide said she only felt love for them, and that both sides want to reunite again.
When we got back from the DMZ, we went to Dunkin Donuts, where I lost one of my bags. I eventually went back to get it, but found that someone had filled it with coupons. I guess that’s a good strategy? Then we moved in to our second Hostel, which was nicer, but in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The lady wouldn’t put us in our original booked room, because she said it was “for Asians” rather than us fatties. So we got split in two. We watched some ridiculous Korean TV, which was basically just extremely sexually explicit comedy.
Another day, we went to a temple, which was really awesome. Much cooler than Japanese, and much less touristy, I’d say. Then we went to Lotte world, which was kind of an incredible amusement park. We just paid 15 dollars for a whole day pass, and all the rides and events were free. It was awesome. People were so friendly there, too! When we were waiting in line for bumper cars, this Korean high school girl was like “You are so handsome!” And then when we were on the escalators, another Korean girl was like “Hi! I love you!” Oh, white guys in Asia. There were a bunch of other times that the people would say hi or pose for pictures. The rides were fantastic, too. They had a bunch of 3D simulations, and a bunch of roller coasters. After 7 hours or so there, we finally retreated. We bought a bunch of alcohol and went back and made a list comparing Korea and Tokyo. No one can ever see that list but us. Korea won, though. But in Japan’s defense, we were only in Korea for less than a week, while we were in Japan for much longer. Still, we were very sad to leave. But who knows, this trip really peaked my interest in Korea, so maybe I’ll return some day.

The Return to Kyoto...CIEE style

I revisited Kyoto with CIEE, my study abroad program. It was a lot of fun.
Yesterday we got up at an ungodly hour to meet at Sophia at 7:30 in the morning. That was shitty, I had to get up at like 5:30, and the director was late. Long shinkansen ride to Kyoto. After dropping stuff off at our hotel, we were sent out to do a lame-ass “research” project. No one of my friends took this seriously, so we just walked around and bullshitted however we could. I originally told them I was going to do Sanjusangendo, which is a temple place where they have 1,000 statues, but I got lazy and I didn’t feel like going off by myself, so I changed it. I decided to do “shrines” (aka, what everyone else was doing because it was easy). Basically this consisted of going to a shrine and approaching an old lady and being like “What’s this?” She was happy to tell us, then she was like “Oh, you are so good at Japanese! And you’re beautiful!” That was a little strange. Some friends did a combined “architecture of temples” BS project. Another did “Sakura,” which was kind of hard to get anything from just walking around. Another did “people at temples,” which consisted of her taking a tally of 5 people and saying what age range they were in. “Most people who go to temples are older women. But there are older men too. And also some younger men. And there were some younger women as well. I saw some kids, too.”
Another friend did “food.” So we ate. When we were restaurant browsing, we were looking in the display windows with the plastic food displays that most places have. Lots of weird shit along the street. At one of them, I was looking really close up, and a sneeze snuck up on me, so I kind of sprayed the display glass. That was embarrassing. I had to turn my back to it and slowly move back and forth to get the spit off. It actually looked nicer afterward though, they should thank me.
Afterward, we went to some coffee shop where we sat around for like 2 hours, pretending to do “research.” I actually took a photo of a shop called research to make myself feel better. We went to this temple made specifically for birth-praying. A friend translated the name to: “Easy birth. Pray for it.”
We walked along a really pretty river, where these Japanese people were sitting on each other like they were having sex. We thought we saw a crab, because it was going upstream, but it turned out to be a plastic bag. Also, a friend punched a little Japanese kid in the face by accident. We finally made it to the shrine where we were to meet the rest of CIEE, and we ventured over to this traditional restaurant where we had a kind of gross meal, and where we shared our “research.” Some of the presentations were so hilarious. It was obvious a lot of people bullshitted on the spot. When they called on this one girl, she said “I’m tired…” so she didn’t end up going. I laughed at that for a long time.
Finally, we went off to Gion, where I went before with my dad. This time, we went to this horrible show specially geared towards tourists, where they basically crammed all Japanese culture into 30 minutes. Afterward (by this point we were all dead), we participated in a tea ceremony. It was very intricate.
Finally, we returned to the hotel, where I bought some coffee and watched some bad J-Dramas in my hotel room. It made me feel good about my Japanese, because I could understand most of it, since it was pretty simple and dumb. And for some reason, shot with a fish-eye lens, which looks ridiculous when people’s faces are on the side of the screen.
I got up around 7 the next morning, and we went to participate in “Zazen meditation,” which I prefer to call “Zazen Torture.” We sat in this freezing cold room with our socks off, sitting in a horribly uncomfortable position, meditating, while a monk went around the room smacking us with his big stick and banging loud-ass blocks together. I was not relaxed at all, I must say.
Finally we went back to a temple and ate octopus balls (that is, balls with octopus inside, not actual octopus’ balls…do they have balls?) and basically complained for about 45 minutes about the lack of trash cans in Japan. WTF Japan, it doesn’t make SENSE. So we had to carry all of our trash around with us. We also got chocolate covered frozen bananas, which were delicious!
Finally, we went back to Kyoto Station to wait for our walking tour (again, around the Gion area). That was pretty cool, though. We saw lots of Sakura and some love hotels. We actually saw a fair amount of Maiko or Geisha, not sure which. We saw like…5 or 6 probably. It was pretty cool. I got some nice photos of them.
Finally, some of us (my friend Mikka and I) returned to Kyoto Station to go back to Tokyo (some stayed in Kyoto). Somehow, even though we were with CIEE, we managed to get separated, and then as we were on the platform, Mikka was like “The train’s leaving!” So she hopped on, and I said “I don’t think that’s our train” but it was too late. So I hopped on as well and the door closed behind me. And indeed, it was not our train. So there was this whole big fiasco, where we had to explain to the train crew, and also find a way to track down our program directors so they wouldn’t wait for us and miss their train. It worked out last minute, luckily, and we actually got to sit in the first-class seats. The train crew were super nice, and kind of creepily efficient. They contacted our group, and they wrote us this whole set of directions in addition to sending one of their train ladies to take us through Tokyo station once we arrived. She was actually kind of eerily nice. She totally walked like a robot, in a very specific way. We were discussing how she must have been trained to walk that way, moving her arms in perfect motions as she walked. And her pace was always consistent, she never sped up or slowed down. And when we got to stairs/escalators, she would say “Please take the escalator, you must be tired. I will take the stairs.” There was plenty of room on the escalator, but she always took the stairs, like to show us that we were above her. And she walked in that weird way down the stairs as well. And then when she got us to our exact platform, she was like “please wait inside here. I am so sorry that we caused you all of this trouble” as if WE didn’t walk onto the wrong train and cause THEM all the trouble. Anyway, it was weird.
While we were waiting for CIEE to get there, we heard all these Japanese people going crazy and shouting what sounded like army march songs or something. Apparently, someone was moving, so all of their colleagues came out. They were all “Banzai! Banzai!” And raising there arms. Well maybe not banzai, but something similar.
But my train troubles had not ended! Back at Tokyo station, someone had inconsiderately killed themselves on my train line AGAIN, so I had to take a really roundabout way back home, which sucked. But I was psyched to discover they finished the renovations in my train station, so we now have a Starbucks again! Woot woot!