It feels like Christmas now! ☺ What? Oh, it’s almost February

Ah a well-earned week away from the computer, but time again to feed the beast; it hungers on literature. So far everything is looking ok for my cell phone (I hope) but with the language barriers it’s hard to say how much information is being withheld from me and for good reason (it took 15 minutes to explain to me how the loner phone was being borrowed, even though I understood right away). Convincing someone to understand that you understand is hard to understand unless you’ve tried, understand?

My Australian friend Ben (Jan 26th was Australia day) was telling me how when the explorers of the Captain Cook crew came and asked a local “what is that strange animal there?” The local looked at him, looked where he was pointing, then looked back and said in his local language “I don’t understand.” That just happened to sound like “Kangaroo” and they’ve been called that ever since.

So yes, now I have a loner phone and nobody’s number or email yet. This phone is a lot more cumbersome and since it’s temporary I won’t take the time to figure it out, nor put information on it to be lost again, which kind of sucks because I got 3 phone calls from someone I probably know although it just looks like a somewhat random 12 digits being displayed, I tried dialing it earlier to no avail, I’ll try again later. I am just hoping I don’t get bad news about the tequila soaked one in for repairs. Maybe 2 days later I got an email on my cell phone from the provider, I couldn’t understand it since it was in Japanese but I COULD understand the “25,000¥” in the message (maybe $250). I started stressing out but later on it was translated to me that it was some sort of promotion; for every friend you recommend to the provider you get 5,000 yen in gift certificates up to 25,000. Never before has an advertisement caused me so much stress but water off the back right?

One of the more amusing student related stories was during a warm up game in an English class. “Boggle” is good to play; you make a 4x4 grid and get students to pick random letters. Using those 16 letters they have 3 minutes to make as many words as they can, but I only go around and ask for their biggest word, the biggest in the class being the winner. It helps with vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling; quick and easy. Anyways this particular class I don’t think they understood the “3 minutes only” and some had their English-Japanese dictionaries out hunting for words even after time was up. I wasn’t going to stress about it that day, so the one student was hunting and gave me his biggest word, “sodomistic.” (…form of sodomy?)

Wow, funny thing was my JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) knew that word too and we both kind blushed for a while, not quite sure what to say and mostly hoping the student didn’t know what it meant, then quickly moved on in case other students asked for its definition. Thinking about it now, since it was a translation dictionary you’d think he would look over and see what it meant. Kinda reminds me of the time when Neal (JET in Inakita) asked his students what they did over summer holidays and the one replied “I had sex with my girlfriend everyday.” Straight faced of course, and of course everyone acted like nothing out of the ordinary just happened.

I suppose we do similar things back. One JET was asking for directions and threw in a cuss word (ye olde “f-bomb”) amidst a bunch of other well-formed Japanese words. We got directions and everything was peachy as if nothing were astray. What a world eh?

Things are winding down for my 3rd years at Tatsuno now too, they just wrote a final I made for them. I am continually disappointed, I keep thinking I’m making tests easier but more people keep failing; and with it being a final exam that’s not cool at all. One teacher reassured me that the students didn’t study so it’s not my fault. That was actually confirmed to me that morning by more than one of them as they sat around the stove in the middle of the classroom warming up; as is the pre-class ritual with many rooms here. Stepping out into the hallway is like stepping outside minus the wind, a temperature of which lately hovers around the minus 5 mark at night. But ya, I guess the second years have to write up a graduation thesis… for high school. I don’t remember if I even had to do that for university; that sounds like something you’d do for your masters or Doctrines.

Well enough of that, time for the weekend right? Did I go to Tokyo? Play video games? Snorkel off the coast of China? (Shakes magic 8-ball…) 3-day ski trip up North? Alright, let’s roll with that. **Spoiler alert! Next weekend is a Mardi-Gras party. End spoiler.**

After school Friday, Jake Patricia Anita and I took Patty’s car (dubbed tubby), put our junk in her trunk and rode her for over an hour straight, way up north to the same place as the fire festival, Nozawa Onsen. We got there, got settled in and settled up with expenses. I figured it was kind of late to hit the slopes even though it would have been beautiful night runs as I wanted to save my legs for the upcoming 2 day punishment they would soon hate me for; for the rest of the week. Other people shared my sentiment and we went outside to play in the snow.” ☺

I started by trying to make a snowman, I really did. But I have never seen so much powder like that before. Just outside of the hotel I would sink in powder up to my waist, any attempts to make a snowman would crumble faster than a pile of fine white sand. Things quickly deteriorated though, as I scrunched some powder up with much effort, projected my spherical bane and watched it explode beautifully on an unexpected target; a death knell for peace and co-operation and a clear act of war.

It was like bringing fire to a dry forest, everyone separated immediately seeking cover and securing their nearest plot of ammunition, desperately trying to reload and retaliate; not just on me but one another. Brother turned against brother, mother against child. You couldn’t turn to attack your enemy without being struck from behind, and it wasn’t long before the ranged attacks turned to melee. People were picked up and thrown into vats of powder; I was run down and tackled from behind, trying to lose my pursuer in my waist-deep constraints. Patricia was tag teamed; one person grabbing her arms and the other her legs as she was swung and lobbed into the thick of the cold. Screams of anguish rang out deep and loud, far into the dark Japanese night (laughter).

So much so that we were told to move from the hotel on four separate occasions, 3 of which fell on deaf ears (mine at least). We understood the dire predicament and an armistice was quickly and silently agreed upon as we went off to search for new Earth to scorch with our flames of war. Luckily I’m usually trailing behind groups most times, as I walk too fast to be in the front. It gave me ample time to build my war machine and strike my adversaries unaware! At least 3 or 4 times I would break up the shaky truce as the scene from earlier would quickly be revived and relived. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it as we scorched the earth countless times, in half an hour hardly making it ½ a block away from ground zero.

A common theme was their fear for me, the Canadian. I crafted fierce weapons of snow with my big strong Canadian hands and propelled my might with ferocious accuracy. But alas, even with their combined fear and knowledge of their big threat from the cold white north, they couldn’t overcome their fear of each other and I continued to dominate. Whenever they would gang up and try to topple me from my throne of terror they would always quickly turn on each other. Foolish mortals, Muhahaha ☺

Many people’s snowballs were rather weak in nature. The powder proving too unstable in their attempts to carve weapons. In time I showed my benevolence as their great ruler and gave them snowballs to fight their enemies with; everyone loved them. One of the best parts of the night though was me getting body slammed by Jake, my feisty neighbor to the south. We posed for my camera as I was struck and lay about a foot deep in snow. After the picture Noboru tried to help me up. He gave me his left hand and I gave him my right. “No dude, other hand” he says just before my wet snowy glove slipped out of his and I fell…

I hit the pile I was just on but this time it gave out; rocked to its foundations by the titanic clash of mighty warriors moments earlier. I fell down a hole over a meter deep and landed on a pile of rocks on my back. In Japan it is common to have water running down drainages running along side roads, in this town especially as people had water running down their driveway constantly to clear the snow. So there I was, maybe a meter and a half down a hole on my back with water running over me and smelling a little ripe.

Noboru called over the others to help “give me your hand man, give me your hand!” a sense of urgency in his voice. “Take a picture! Take a picture!” I reply, laughing all the while. I got out soon after and my feet were soaked through the shoes through my socks and so on. The scene we just witnessed scarred us all and the fun slowly came to a stop as we made our way back to dry off, each of us learning an important lesson about war (Canada rules, whoo!). Our hotel had a dry room for ski gear, where I left a bunch of my stuff in that night to dry off.

The next day we started off a little early, making sure to get the free breakfast before 9. Renting gear for the next 2 days was a little expensive ($50) and I again contemplated buying my own gear like the majority of JETs I know in Nagano; as it stands I still don’t think I’ll get any. It snowed for most of the Saturday and Sunday that we were there and it’s hard to imagine how difficult it would be to ski without the goggles that I rented, even though at times my visibility was easily cut in half when I put those things on. A big problem when you are in winter wonderland.

I’ve never seen a place so white and soft, it was so surreal and words fail me just how beautiful it was. There were big fat snow flakes slowly falling at all times while your skis plowed through centimeters of the stuff on the well run courses. We went on other courses where there were fewer people and I witnessed the most unbelievable thing over and over again.

There was power, so deep. As I skied through it, it easily covered my knees. I have never seen anything like that, even at the beach, it was like there was nothing there. I remember thinking to myself, “how am I even moving right now?” You couldn’t see the ground you just knew you were in something deep and you were cutting through it like… a knife through liquid? I can’t even compare it to anything, as I’ve never seen anything like that (can you feel me reaching for words? Ya it’s tough). When I looked over at people beside me, because the snow was bouncing up and off of them it was like watching only the top part of someone’s body skate along a sea of powdery white snow. I managed to snag a little bit of a video of the powder and hope to post it later, some of the scenes were so beautiful it’s hard to illustrate… just white everywhere you looked save for sparse pieces of brown where fragments of trees weren’t yet covered.

Some people had some crazy adventures; taking jumps they didn’t see then spending the next 15 minutes digging themselves out. Ben said a couple times he had to take off his snowboard and paddle on it like a surf board as he was too heavy for the power to even crawl out. I was in a similar situation, I had to dig my ski out and somehow balance on the other ski while trying to put it back on as I couldn’t put any weight on my foot.

The signs on the hill were fairly entertaining like “danger crashing into a tree” and my favourite “Never Come back Happen a disaster” for a roped-off area. Snow in Japan just feels a lot different than back home too as most of the time there is hardly any wind and it’s just large soft flakes falling down. Also the students shovel the snow in their skirts, which is amusing to me. A fellow JET was saying his students even shoveled their baseball field so they could still practice, that sport is pretty popular here.

But ya, I had an awesome time. It got a little pricey and I’m maybe done skiing for the year but it was worth it. I’m back at work today with sore calves from the skiing and sore forearms from the snowballs (I’m no Popeye) and a little tired as my head froze most of the night. When I finally put a blanket over top of it I got some decent sleep but it was practically time to get up by then. I missed my train again to Yayoi but luckily it’s like the one time of the day another train runs like 20 minutes later instead of an hour later so I’m not TOO late… it’s so hard to get out of bed in such a cold house, but I guess I’m not really a morning person in the first place. Oh ya and we made a snowman before we left! ☺ I had such a hard time picking pictures to post on this main page as I love so many of them, be sure to check out my photo bucket, I put the fire festival and ski trip in the same folder as they’re both from Nozawa Onsen this month, our watch the You Tube videos from the mountain.

"A book is a gift you can open again and again." -Garrison Keillor

tnoy

Ice and castles, games and lasagna

Too much blog writing this month me thinks. In theory it should be a short entry but you know my passion for rambling ☺ not to mention how many filler stories I can pull out involving exploits with my crazy kids. I suppose this “week’s” adventure begins Thursday. That card game John (onisan / older brother) taught, 99, makes for an excellent English game/lesson and many people are surprisingly rusty when it comes to numbers. In fact a couple of my classes consisted of just playing that card game with the one rule modification of “when you play a card, you have to say what number you’re at; In English” ☺ All too fast and easily they go to saying it in Japanese or they get bored with the slow pace of figuring out the numbers and not quite understanding such a new game, giving up before 99 when the game gets more crazy-go-nuts. For the most part I think it went really well, even if ½ the students figured the game out after I left and played it later with their friends… the non-English version of it ☺

Haha ah well, it will make playing it in the future easier should I pull out a quick deck of cards and tell them to run with it. My New Zealand tutor group didn’t want to learn actually, they just wanted to play 99 ☺ I did incredibly poorly, losing out incredibly fast and when I was out of the game they figured we should stop playing and get on with the lesson. Unfortunately all the shenanigans of such an entertaining (and sometimes loud) game got us kicked out of the library! We were sent to a much colder room where the focus quickly shifted from “hurry and get this done” to “hurry so we can go to Tony’s and see his kitten” (rough translation smoothed out immensely for your reading comfort of course) (pictured: ice sculptures and Matsumoto castle)

Of course right after my last blog when I was neenering (is that a word?) all the Saskatchewanians (watch my English fail) cold snow ice ground tomorrow, obtain! So that night it snowed and now my town is covered in what seems to be a more permanent snow/ice fall. Karma eh? So we quickly froze on the slow walk (I walk too fast so when I’m in a group it just appears to be slow, Moon-Ju said many people in Regina/Canada walk really fast) and got to my house. Otaku kind of freaked out at first from the 4 strangers that quickly encircled her saying “kawaii” and reaching to pet; she clawed me up in one desperate attempt to escape.

All was good in a little bit and before I knew it the focus changed from my kitty Otaku to the PS3, Wii and pile of games that were sitting in my room. We tried Wii sports tennis but the room proved too small for 4 people swinging their arms, I need to reorganize the place maybe, especially considering how much some of the furniture gets used… but bowling was a success. I think they tried to teach me some cuss words for when I do bad but unfortunately for them I heard those cuss words a million times already in anime ☺ After an hour or two it was time to go and catch their train home.

Otaku, who was scared at first, cried when they left but it was a good time. At the very least it was a good push for me to clean my house having people over again; it is far too easy to sit in my heated room and keep warm when outside that room I have to routinely change Otaku’s water dish because it has frozen over. Currently that’s what I blame my lack of new oven use on as simply cooking supper can be a frozen-foot ordeal in matter of minutes followed by a rush to the warm room to stick my feet in front of the heater for a while; I’ll bake more in the spring maybe.

Friday was nice and relaxing with a couple classes during the day and a couple of movies at night. Kubota stopped by and gave me a much-needed kick in the rear with the Japanese (tell me about your day in Japanese). I then realized I haven’t really done anything with it since I left for Korea. That was really nice of him, you be surprised how much a little push can get you moving in the right direction. I didn’t really have to clean that night, as my house was mostly clean already from Thursday for the upcoming Video Game party that I threw for Saturday…

It was nice having people come over and play video games again, and with my new oven I had ingredients for making some lasagna! We were excited, but it seems many JETs are on diets or vegetarians or things of that nature so the desire for vegetarian lasagna was expressed. There is lots of pressure here if you’re a girl to lose weight, especially if you have (oh noes!) curves! How dreaded… most foods that you buy have the number of calories right on the front label to help you better count. But anyways I like food so who am I to argue? I had never made lasagna before and I was feeling pretty good at that point; so another JET, Charity, volunteered to cook it up.

It was great and all, until it came time to plug in my oven at my house for the first time. We knocked out the entire house’s power so many times until we found a happy medium for the oven to not hate us. That pretty much killed the video game party and I somehow overlooked not having any playing cards at my house (they were all at school for the 99 game) Luckily I had that monopoly board game otherwise there might have been a mutiny and we went around the house unplugging everything we saw. Finally fate smiled upon us and stopped knocking out the power; we were reduced to my new oven, 1 light in the kitchen on and one light in my heated room on the lowest setting, all use those low voltage bulbs. That’s is my house’s limit, but at least I can use the oven right? ;)

During the 20 minutes of cooking or so the house’s temperature kept dropping but luckily the body heat made up for it. A trip to the bathroom involved me shining a flashlight through the window (distorted glass; you can’t see anything you pervs :P) for people who had an appointment in said vicinity of business. I need to buy some lights as well so I can have a disco ball party; the glow sticks I brought out were a nice touch though.

Eventually the oven was done and we could turn lights/heaters/music back on and eat the tasty lasagna. I even made chip dip with what little sour cream I lucked out in finding and it was a nice taste of home. It was expensive but worth it, maybe $10 for the dip ingredients and $7 for the bag of ruffled chips; funny how you gain new appreciation for small comforts when they are gone; I miss Kraft Dinner :’(. Oh and the soup mix for the dip came in these weird hard cubes. I had to put on shoes and stomp them to turn them to powder for the dip, as they hurt my callus-free pretty-boy feet. Oooh my soft tootsies! (pictured: John, Jake, Me, Russ. Ignore that I used cheap plates and it slopped on my pants)

And now for the stupidest thing that I did that night which innocently made that easily the most expensive party I have ever thrown. I had my mug of refreshment nonchalantly resting beside my chair in a perfect lazy-man, only-have-to-move-my-forearm position for easy replenishment when I quickly made a text message / email on my phone to Jake and company who were enroot. After the message I put my phone down in my perfect lazy-man way so I could get back to the video game at hand when it coincidentally got completely submerged in its pool of impeding death. What rotten luck, that’s what it was. The mug could barely fit the phone and it happened to be full enough to drown the sucker. My phone hung on for a little bit, but coughed and sputtered its last. It is quite depressing, will go to the dealer later and hopefully not be out $500…

But enough on that, the party was fun and it was clearly too cold to crash at my house so everyone went home maybe before midnight. Sunday saw a slow start to the day but Neal (JET in Ina, went to TGS’07 with me) gave me a needed kick to the butt to get out and see a once-in-a-year deal in Matsumoto, ice sculptures at the castle. I took $40 thinking it would be plenty for a day out, especially if you’re not doing anything expensive like walking around and sightseeing but Japan proved me wrong yet again. Anyways you don’t need to hear how quickly expenses pile up in Japan from me again, I’ve done that enough.

We went out to Matsumoto and saw an igloo! Neal never saw one before (he’s from South Africa) and later on we braved the line up to get inside to see a crappy steel mesh and carpentry enforced igloo. Feeling ripped off we quickly vacated said sham. I told Neal I will make him a proper igloo when we have enough snow with my elite skills earned during winter survival course in elementary. I remember that time vividly because I still think it is stupid to take time to rip down your igloo the next day and carefully replace each snowflake to the place you found them as to not “disturb the local eco-system” or something. I mean if anyone takes the time to build a proper igloo you can guess they are in trouble.

I still remember arguing intensively with the teacher until I backed them down into a corner: “life or death, you have to keep moving, do you still spend the last 3 of your 5 hours alive replacing snow to where you found it, or trying to find help?” And again like with another debate I had with a teacher who very aggressively pushed her …view on us students (it was like grade 3 too!), they finally agreed to my bleak, last-ditch, scenario tied to all kinds of inane (inane, not insane) conditions to buy my silence. But, Matt advised me against telling the later story and he is probably right, I even deleted what her view was because people still get upset at it even being mentioned and go out and murder doctors. That was right around the time I realized to get good marks in English class you have to agree with the teacher; there was no room for debate or freethinking. (Yes, I still did poorly on my essay that had to support her …view. So the teacher had the last laugh)

Wow that was a mess, went from seeing an igloo to talking about …something completely unrelated in like 5 seconds, funny how you can remember bitter memories from the past. So yes, after the igloo we took our time gawking at all the different ice sculptures they had set up. It was especially pretty with Matsumoto castle in the background. I guess the sculptors were up all night working on these beautiful pieces. It was kind of a warm day too, some of the ice was visibly weakening but we still enjoyed them for what they were.

Afterwards we went on a tour of the castle itself and it was really neat. I believe this is one of the top 5 or so castles to see in Japan, maybe because it didn’t suffer through massive reconstruction or anything like that during certain periods of turmoil in the not-too-distant past. There were many floors with steep stairs and many sniper/archery holes built into the walls everywhere. The whole thing was made out of very nice wood.

Neal and I walked around looking for the foreign food store in town and we made off with some foreign delicacies like Root Beer and pickles ☺ It was a lot of walking though and we were both pretty tired. We were hoping earlier to watch a movie at a theater (been a while for me) but I think the scenario on the train went something like this:

Me: (yawning violently) “oh man, what time is it?”
Neal: (checks phone [mine was broken]) “it’s 5:30”
Me: “Whaaaaaaaaa?” (it had been dark for a while, felt like 8 or 9)
Neal: (yawns)
Me: “If you were a vampire, who would you bite first? I call dibs on that guy there” (pointing)
That guy there: “nan de kore wa??? Ahhhh itai!” (gets blood sucked)

That last part may, or may not, be true but I was so tired I hardly remember. So ya, we never made it to the movie and went home. I spent the night eating non-garlic related food with Otaku. Today has been pretty good, most memorable part was when some students came in and I tried making small talk with them (as I do with each batch that cycles through here.) Somehow asking about if they had a coat for the snow they were saying some Japanese I didn’t understand. They said “gunman” or something and I thought they said “gundam” (popular anime). Well one thing led to another and I was showing them a big-mech anime that I happened to be watching last night while relaxing. They watched a couple seconds in confusion (nad de…? /what the…?) and soon one student looked me in the eye and said in perfect English: “are you Otaku?” (again Otaku is like geek / nerd)

Hahaha so classy, I escaped humiliation though by showing them my Otaku at home, one picture happened to have her beside my Nintendo Wii. I tried telling the students it is my kitty who plays games and watches anime and I only join her ;) haha. “Crazy cat” ;).

It snowed again today big time. It is so beautiful around town with the snow in the mountains and in the funky trees. Some students built an igloo! It was so cool, I made sure to grab pictures. But ya, looks like I didn’t have to pull out filler stories and I still wrote over a 2000 word essay, that’s enough for today. Maybe I should get back to that studying Japanese business.

"We all learn by the honorable path of horrible mistakes" -unknown

tnoy

A drunken brawl better known as a festival

Been a while eh? No it hasn’t! My fingers still bear the scars of last week’s relentless updating, but at least me being busy updating the blog doesn’t give me much to talk about for that week I suppose ☺ So ya I’ve been back in Japan for about a week now, most of that time was spent getting back in the groove of things; after posting the one blog entry I had to send out like 30 emails which took well over an hour :S I hope you understand if I feel the need to get away from the computer; I’m glad I didn’t write an update on Monday during my day off ;)

So ya back into the same old same old at work; playing English games in class, having students yell “I love you” then run away giggling after, teasing students with ridiculous questions to test their comprehension. (“It’s hot isn’t it?” when there is snow on the ground) My third years at Tatsuno started making Christmas cards before the break, which are now done; they had to individually present them to me as if it were for me.

A prevalent theme of the cards were snowmen and mice (2008 is the year of the rat on the Chinese Zodiac) One card had a man crying while surrounded with pretty hearts because a mouse was eating his Christmas cake (in Japan KFC and cake are the most festive things for Christmas)

Speaking of cake, single women over 25 are referred to as stale cake or Christmas cake. As in cake that hasn’t been bought yet so it’s starting to go bad and you can get it for a discount. There is a double meaning to the Japanese word for that as in “desperate to be wed” or something. I don’t know if this expression is very common anymore but it’s still strange nonetheless. Men are excepted from any kind of forced stereotype like that of course ;) For any of my gaming friends reading this: the cake is a lie! :O

Friday was a party at Patricia’s in Ina, which was a good chance to catch up with other JETs, who all went their separate ways for holidays. Some went to Cambodia and Vietnam; others back home (South Africa, the states, Scotland) while others bummed around Japan (I think I covered most of the people there…) While Jake and I related our Korean adventures. (pictured: things I miss. Oh egg nog and chocolate milk where art thou? Just joking, John Patty Melissa I hope you are doing well)

Cambodia sounded similar to China in that after hours, 50+-year-old Americans would sit around a bar while seedy girls made their rounds seeing whom they can get money from that night… wink wink. Chris and I saw that at the Hard Rock Café in Beijing and it is something creepy for sure. Vietnam sounds super cool though, where every time you cross the road your life is in danger because there are no cross walks so there is a certain way to cross and be somewhat safe… like keep walking at the same slow pace, make sure you’re visible at all times, don’t hesitate or anything out of line. Apparently the beaches were fantastic too, and Jake was saying North Vietnam is much nicer too. Maybe this will be an adventure for another day, it sounds like some other JETs want to go to Korea with me so there might be another trip in the somewhat near future; I want to see more of Japan first though.

Saturday I had to wake up early to volunteer some English for the students going to New Zealand. I ended up with the same group I tutor Thursdays and it was a lot of fun. It started off kind of slow with “what did you do over the holidays” and other maybe more common questions until it slowly migrated into something they cared more about “who would win in a fight: Pikachu (game character) or Geroro (anime character)” and “where can I catch a Pikachu?”

“Toni chigao!” (tony that’s not it!) Is something I hear often, usually in response to one of my dumb questions. It was fun; I think the Pikachu questions stemmed from asking what they played when they were kids. I told them I played Barbie with my sisters when I was little because my older brother John would beat me up instead of playing together and wondered what kinds of things Japanese kids play when they are small. (Speaking of which, what DID John do when he was younger? He didn’t do much with his younger siblings :P) I don’t know if they understood though as the one student, Ryu, said “metal gear solid” (a video game that is maybe 5 years old) and another, Aya, said “play Pokemon”. She even remembered the price of a pokeball, 800 yen, which I might be able to catch a Pikachu with.

After the organizers had us all do some town dances together. My students helped me through it and I think I did ok. The one town dance had you catching fireflies (Tatsuno is famous for its firefly festival) and the other one… I’m not sure what we were doing but there was a fancy footwork part of it that had me looking pretty silly.

It was fun and all, and the rest of the long weekend (Sat-Mon) was spent either playing Metroid 3 which I got for Christmas (thanks mom) or shopping for provisions. I cancelled out on a ski trip and a trip to the shrine along with other things I probably should have got done (study, clean, etc) for this opportunity to relax and get my fill of Vitamin G. Oh and I played with Otaku who has gotten fat now, she has grown a lot but is still super cute.

So ya, that would be it for my update normally, BUT aren’t you glad I picked Wednesday to post instead? Last night, Tuesday, I went to “one of the craziest things you’ll see in Japan”. In Nozawa Onsen at a festival called dousoujin matsuri (?) there was free Sake and people lighting a large… thing on fire. That is the quick summary, it’s hard to properly describe something this large and obscure… let me try.

In Japan apparently people have “bad luck years.” For girls the age 19 and 33 are years for bad luck and for men 25 and 42 (my number is up in 2 months! Oh noes!). On those years you are to visit a shrine and try to pray away the bad luck or something. One of my teachers related it to me just recently how when she was 19 she had appendicitis and had surgery and when her dad was 42 he broke his leg skiing. Fuel for the superstition fire, I know, but still a weird coincidence. Anyways at this festival, boys that are 25 years old carry fire from a large pile and try to burn down a fort-like shrine or something that the town spent all year building for this event. The fort is defended by 42 year-old men. On top of this fort are “bird-men” who sing songs, about 6 meters off the ground.

Atleast that is the clean/clear way of explaining it, what actually took place was a little different; maybe in part to all the free Sake (Japanese rice wine). The birdmen sang for a while but soon were too drunk to even stand. A couple people almost fell from the roof of this fort and others simply passed out with their legs dangling. They had a rope tied to them so they wouldn’t die I suppose but they looked clearly confused many times. I hear when the fire got started though you could see fear in their eyes. The one birdman (they are wearing a flammable cape made of reeds or something, suppose to be wings?) had some burning sticks thrown on him. His shoulders burnt a bit before he snapped out of his drunken stupor to brush the flames off, get angry and throw the sticks back down to the ground. Later on they were slowly helped down a ladder at the back to escape the eventual bonfire.

So that was the birdmen, the 42 year old defenders were maybe just as drunk but the constant ash in their face, the smoke they were breathing, and the fists they were throwing probably helped keep them from passing like their neighbors on the roof. I guess it helped that they also had ropes to hang on to, to keep their balance. Some of the battles got really intense and there were ambulances and fire trucks nearby at all times, although I think the ambulances were busier with the drunks they were always carrying away on stretchers; they were carrying them even before the first started! They used the ropes to whip the fire out and to smack the 25-year-old whipper-snappers to keep them at bay. Many of their faces were streaked a dark grey from all the ash they were exposed to.

So those were the defenders, the 25 year olds were trekking from the bird’s nest (they were throwing down the kindling torches) to the bonfire, which was slowly being rolled towards the fort for one spectacular finale. I assume they threw fists at the defenders as well but I think they were more concerned with just getting some fire onto the fort by means of ashes or streaking in while the defenders were busy beating up their comrades. Jake said he saw one guy sneak in past the drunken melee and hold his torch up to the roof trying to light it up before he was discovered and promptly routed.

Eventually the bonfire got close enough and everyone was evacuated while the fort slowly burnt. Large murals nearby with Kanji and other decorations were later thrown onto the fire as well. The roof collapsed a couple times, the first time being the most spectacular as the fire was mostly smoke up to that point; the following heat wave from the 10 meter high fire scorched even my face and I was maybe 20 meters away. This place was pretty packed and with the panic that didn’t help much; I could hardly stand as it was with all the ice running downhill into the fire.

After both decorations were thrown into the fire many people left; after the roof collapsed for the last time even more people took off. We were shocked just how many foreigners were at this event, almost half and half maybe. As is the way with these festivals though, even back home mostly tourists and people like that attend. A coworker told me how she lived nearby this village but never once attended the event. I took a couple videos and pictures which will be posted in due time.

One thing that I really enjoyed from yesterday was simply the drive up on the freeway. Living in Saskatchewan conditions you to long road trips I suppose, where commutes from Moose Jaw to Regina on a daily basis become commonplace. I avoided these freeways before largely because I don’t know the road system that well and I heard they are kind of pricey. But oh man as weird as it sounds it was a nice taste of home just being able to drive again. I have gotten way too tired of the red lights and the 40 minute drives to go 20 kilometers on confusing roads with drivers who will pull to the side (maybe ½ meter shoulders, so they’re still taking up 1/2 of the lane) and many other grievances…

It was scary at first going up to 100km/hr again! That’s how long it has been I guess but like riding a bike it comes back to you pretty quick once your feet are wet. It was so nice that I started saying to Jake: “Oh man this is so nice, it’s like being back home. Minus the curves, hills, other-side-of-the-road, tunnels, bridges, mountains, ice…”

Jake cuts me off saying “so it’s nothing like home?” Hahaha touché mon frier, touché.

Matt and Jake let my plug in my ipod after some clever negotiating on my part. “You’re from Britain Matt, you HAVE to love this stuff.” We were in Matt’s car, mine doesn’t even have a working radio and we listening to some of my 1.5 hour-long trance mixes; good times. (It was a long drive, we never left Nagano prefecture either. It’s a big place).

It was all fun and games until we pulled up to the toll both to get off the freeway and it was $30! One way! For an hour of driving! I find that somewhat outrageous, I can only imagine the amount of money they’re making off this highway robbery. Can you imagine what a normal every-day 7 hour trip from Regina to Calgary would be? $210! Or worse yet, a completely normal and standard trip to Toronto’s airport to pick up your friend who is visiting, or a trip to Montreal to go shopping on the weekend? I am outraged ☺ Tell James in Canada I say hello, ask him why can’t I buy any Canadian beer in Japan? :’( I mean we are Pacific neighbors, the least they could do is some kokanee or pilsner…

Maybe this is some kinda big fun conspiracy that keeps us from traveling exotic places like, oh let’s say Japan, and keep us glued to the TV while playing Metroid 3 for maybe 30 hours on the weekend; while money made on said tolls go to the gaming companies to make bigger and better games! I’ll have to test this theory this weekend maybe ☺ Get ready my tin-foil hat, comrades! I needs my Vitamin G…

That’s it for now, time to prep for my next lesson… I am really enjoying the lack of snow and ice around my town ☺ neener neener :P (I have been watching the weather, Tatsuno is a constant 20 degrees warmer than Regina, you better not dip to -21 degrees or I WILL get snow! :P Luckily everything has melted thus far)

"Always do the right thing. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain

tnoy

A holly jolly Korean New Year Part 2

I’ll start off where I left off I guess, New years day saw us sleeping in until noon after all that dancing and stuff. Jake and I went to a temple (as is the Asian custom to do on New Years day) with Moon-Ju’s parents. She had work to do or something, can’t remember what but she didn’t come along. So ya, we went to the famous “T’ongdosa Temple” where Melissa stayed the night back when she came here. It was a beautiful scenic area in the mountains with a fancy stone bridge over a stream, and hundreds of brightly colored lanterns illuminating the walkway to the front gate among other things. There was another type of wishing well; this time you threw money into a pond where a pedestal was erected underwater. If your coin landed on it your wish would come true, great way to get rid of those 10 won coins that are nearly impossible to spend ;) (1 won is 0.1 cents Canadian.) Anyways I got 2 of them all right and it was the same wish as the day before with the rocks so technically I’ll have triple the luck on my wish, right? :D

After the temple we went to the “spa” or public baths you could call them. We indulged in the different saunas and temperature varied waters; I still enjoy sitting in the ice cold bath after getting way too hot in the warm ones. So anyways later on we were getting ready for this “full body massage” that we kept hearing about since arriving. I was in the middle of wondering what kind of cute girl will help me relax with a hearty massage when we turned the corner and met with our reality. Two short, hairless, naked Korean men with steel wool gloves and beach ball bellies awaited our arrival with waist-high beds in front of them.

Haha for some reason I sure wasn’t expecting that, but I guess it WAS the men’s public bath (where everyone is naked anyways). Ah, how strange wandering thoughts can shatter the moment. If you were wondering about the steel wool comment, it was because we weren’t actually “massaged” as one might delicately put it. No, it was much more interesting than that. We were very slowly and meticulously relieved of our top layer of skin. I wish I were making this up; they took their time going over every inch of our naked bodies save for the face or bottoms of our feet with this painful sock-glove. I was grimacing in pain for most of it and was afraid a couple times he might actually rip open my stitches on my hip from the surgery among other fears. I went into a few more details a moment ago but it made even me gag so I deleted them and I will save you from my own discomfort, leaving the rest of that 20 minute long session to your imagination. It ended none too quickly and he made sure to show me the layers he took off that were now strewn about my body and the immediate area.

Well that was an unpleasant experience but Jake didn’t have much of a problem with it, maybe my skin is more sensitive or something. I wasn’t in there much longer and got dressed and waiting in the lounge until it was time to leave. There was news on and it was rather uninteresting so later I somehow snatched the remote and changed it over to channel 71, the star craft channel ☺ Almost immediately the atmosphere around the locker room changed as people got excited and huddled around us watching TV. Boys who heard it from far away shouted “star craft!” and ran over to watch it with us. I said to Jake “maybe this was a bad idea, we are attracting naked boys.” Haha it was so strange and it started a couple cool conversations with people around us about their son who plays or whatever we could scratch out commutatively regarding the game.

Yikes enough on that, we had a great supper and learnt a Korean card game which is similar in Japan. It is a lot like matching but it was still fun, hard to describe without the deck to show you (it had special cards kinda like uno). Anyways the next day (Weds Jan 2) we took a bus to Seoul. The bus took about 4 hours and we didn’t do much other than check into our hostel for the upcoming 3 nights, read a lonely planet on things to do, and explore the immediate area waiting for Star to finish up work so we could all hang out together. The hill we climbed had a great view over the city of Seoul during the sunset and a cool thing about Seoul is there are exercise equipment strung out on these nature trails for the general public to use and enjoy. We found it odd but they were still entertaining, some we would spend time trying to figure out their purpose and digging into the old memory banks of elementary school phys ed class.

On the way back we saw a robot museum! It was closed though and we were sad, me especially. We met up with Star and had a wonderful evening again just chatting and trading stories; she showed us another really cool Korean dish that involved chicken. Korea seems to be big into chicken, another stark contrast with Japan that relies heavily on fish or beef, sometimes pork. She had planned a nature walk for us which coincidentally landed us on the same hill we were a couple hours previously ☺ That was alright though as this time it was a nice night view of the same area. You could see Seoul tower nicely again and it was lit up with fantastic colours. Star had to leave to get ready for a weekend snowboarding trip and we were sad but it was fun while it lasted. We went to a live jazz club (my first time) and relaxed with a beer listening to live jazz music.

Jazz and beer is a strange combination, a fusion that almost forces one to delve into their own souls and search. I spent the next couple hours just reflecting on where I was, where I want to go and the pros and cons to each possibility; or maybe I’m just weird ☺ I just know the Korean trip was a great time for me to simply get away from it all. I shocked myself with how much negativity came up about my current situation and all of it was digested and processed accordingly. Things like my cold house, missing my friends and family back home, how utterly busy I have become and other grievances that have become buried in my sub-conscience and all of a sudden my body was puking it all up at once; tired of being downplayed and demanding my attention.

Who has all the answers? I certainly don’t. I just go out every day and try to be the best person that I can be; or at least the kind of person my conscience has concocted as one who is a good person. I feel many of my actions are of a self-less nature, taking in the welfare of others before my own personal gratification. But are they really? One may argue my very existence in this foreign place is a direct contradiction to all that I believe, that me being here because I want to itself is being selfish.

Anyways I need not trouble you further with that stuff, I contemplate posting even that. Anyway I was definitely rattled leaving the club but was determined to bury it again for another day and enjoy the today for what it was, a vacation in Korea. Thursday came and we went to a town called Suwon, which is about an hour away by subway from Seoul with a rather large fortress in the middle surrounded by and older styled wall. Jake and I spend the next 3 hours traversing the parameter of that wall and seeing the city. I was rather surprised to see a humongous European style cathedral in that city. We didn’t spend much time in the fortress itself as the fresh paint and new buildings didn’t have much of an authentic feel to it. Before we left there were many cool China-styled markets with vendors and goods out on the street for the consumers to haggle over; perhaps it was a flea market? Oh and the train station coming home had a vending machine for books, the bottom row of which were books about your blood type ☺ I found that particularly amusing, apparently blood types have different meanings in Korea than they do Japan. I still find it odd, I mean there are only 4 types really; someone is getting rich off this superstition ☺

We met up with some Australian fellas that were staying at our hostel and made a voyage about ½ hour away for some Mexican food ☺ It was a humorous journey which included the “is this our stop?” along with the door closing behind Jake after he stepped out with the rest of us trapped on the subway and their unforgiving closing doors. He took the next one and all was good, but it was still funny to see him laugh at the 6 of us trapped on the train and helplessly coast away, clawing at the window like puppies in need of their mother (all the while again, Jake violently laughing at the whole thing through the window).

We didn’t stay up late as we figured we were probably doing a DMZ tour the next day. The tour was booked so our plans moved it to Saturday. Friday we met up with another JET who was visiting her friend that was classmates with her when they were learning Japanese. She uses Japanese everyday at her job but she says being with her friend was the “first time” she was “glad to have learnt Japanese.” I was still kind of rattled from the Jazz night so I didn’t need to hear that, my low Japanese level gets me down sometimes and hearing that from people who can practically speak fluently doesn’t help the motivation much.

We all ended up going to an old prison used during the last Japanese invasion for POWs. It was interesting seeing the old cells and reading about the history, even if WWII wasn’t mentioned at all, it kind of eluded to Korea forcing them out near the end of the war. There were different types of torture used but I don’t think it was displayed very well and a lot of it was aimed at getting children to bear a grudge against their Japanese neighbors; at least that was the impression I got. The information pamphlet even mentioned on the first page how important it was to spread their ancestor’s passion (read: racism) on to tomorrow’s youth. Which brings up another story, our friend was on the bus talking with her friend in Japanese when an older man abruptly interrupted and gave her a big long lecture on “Why are you speaking Japanese? Don’t you know what they did?” and all that stuff. Apparently he was so upset he got off at the next stop.

Anyways those are never happy places I guess, I found the one I visited in Europe much more informative; it didn’t have graphic mannequins dripping in blood and voice boxes playing screams in loops while children ran about us doing their homework assignments or a Japanese guard mannequin sitting back smoking a cigar while “watching torture on the monitors” or something like that. Didn’t know they had monitors back then. Apparently it was refitted and used by Korea up to 14 years ago or so before becoming a museum.

We weren’t there very long and like I said I wasn’t too impressed with the place, there wasn’t much English to be read. After many emails and a lot of co-ordination our friend had to leave and we were left to fend for ourselves again. We perused the area where there were markets and cool food shops; the one shop had a guy with a monster mallet making rice cakes. We spent a couple hours procuring our return tickets for Saturday then went out to see Seoul’s nightlife.

Star is a great gal, even though she was busy and she had work, she was still kind enough to send a lot of helpful information on where to go, how to get there and other useful stuff. Having a phone with an email address is really helpful! Anyways, we went to a couple clubs and had an amazing time, dancing until 5 in the morning. One place had tequila shots for $1.50 each and another place called M2 played electronic music that I loved and had a huge dance floor. The bartenders there were similar to ones back home, wearing scandalous outfits. Not that I’m complaining it was just so odd seeing something that provocative in an Asian country. Very nice! :D As Jake said “I swear I’m not staring!” haha

The next day we went to the DMZ. Last time I went I saw the tunnels and the train station and whatever, this time we went to the JSA where the table sits that North and South come together to have talks. This was easily the most interesting part of the trip; we had to sign waivers before we could go in saying we understood that our safety wasn’t guaranteed and what not. It specified specific rules like who you are not allowed to talk to by law and stuff, we got to keep it after the tour as a memento ☺ pretty cool.

We luckily had an American soldier step in and give the tour at the actual JSA as our current guide had rather shabby English. We saw cool things and I took many pictures when it was specifically allowed. Korean guards need to be at least 6 feet tall and a minimum of a black belt in tae kwon do. We saw the propaganda village from a distance where they have the largest flag in the world, 300 pounds or so flying over nice buildings that are uninhabited, trying to lure South Koreans over to defect.

We went inside the building where the talks take place and by going on one side of the table I was actually inside North Korea so I can add another country to my checklist ;) We were specifically told what we could or couldn’t do which included no pointing at anything at anytime. Apparently not long ago someone pointed at something and the North Koreans used the picture as propaganda saying “they are laughing at us” or something and before there used to be a strict dress code, specifically against jeans and propaganda saying “look how poor the Americans are!” or something. There are LARGE jamming towers that you can see in the distance that North Korea uses to keep radio and TV waves out of their country. (pictured: SK soldiers staring down NK. They stand half-way like that in case they are shot at then they aren't full targets)


We heard stories of the struggles over the years, North Korean ambushes, axe murder over trimming of a tree and America’s responding “operation paul bunyan”. We saw the bridge of no return where they filmed the bond movie and where POWs were traded. We saw the old house erected in 48 hours in the distance across the border where the armistice was signed. We saw the high tech surveillance everywhere, the quick time anti-infantry scramble units, the anti tank barrier, rare wild life in the DMZ where no one has been in over 50 years and that is littered with mines…

I could go on and on. Like I said, easily the most interesting thing of the trip to Korea, really cool and well worth the money. On the way back at a gift shop I bought some tea from North Korea for omiyage (presents) for back at the office. It smells good but I don’t really like the taste, some teachers joke with me saying they are afraid it might be poison ☺

We bused back that night and stayed at Moon-Ju’s again. The next day (Sunday Jan 6) she took to Busan to the beach! It was too cold to go swimming so we went to a large aquarium. It was a really nice place with glass tunnels that you could see sharks and large turtles swim around you. There are a couple videos on youtube of it now and lots of pictures posted. There were even cute penguins, so cool! Outside there was a car with an aquarium inside it and we went on a 3D ride that was really fun. Moon-Ju kept screaming and I kept laughing, it was really fun.

We went on a more scenic tour after that, walking around the shoreline seeing buildings and beach in the background, and fishermen in front of us huddled on the large rocks casting into the ocean. There was a large building near there where APEC 2005 was held and had pictures of various world leaders, even Paul Martin.

That night we went out for food and I saw Yuran again for the first time in years. She was surprised that I even remembered her but that’s alright, I think she got cuter since I last saw her. ☺ We all had a good time catching up and reminiscing, apparently I lost a lot of weight since she saw me last so I was beaming at the compliment. This was the meal where we got our whole deep fried chicken as a side dish to accompany our French fries. I poked some questions in her direction like if her company is hiring engineers or not ;) Oh and I’m to tell everyone she misses them! Especially Melissa. Unfortunetly I didn’t get any pictures together with her, it slipped my mind. Sorry everyone. (why did I only take 750 photos?!?! Oh the delicious irony)

Everyone had to work the next day so it wasn’t a very late night. Monday was technically our last day in Korea and it was a relaxing one. After sleeping in and lunch with Moon-Ju’s dad and other workers from the university we went to a large park in Ulsan. We spent a couple hours there enjoying nature trails and exercise machines; one machine flipped you upside down! It was cool but I couldn’t go on it long, too much pressure on the head.

Moon-Ju picked us up after work and took us to a traditional Korean market place to buy supper for the night. We got chicken feet, pig feet, seaweed and other tasty treats ☺ Ok I didn’t like the pig feet much but I guess it’s popular there. I love those style markets, they are so cool and the people were so friendly. I tried to buy a cheap Korean pear but the lady gave me an expensive one for the same price ☺ so nice.

The last night was really relaxing, sitting up late and enjoying each other’s company. We didn’t talk too much though because of the language barrier and because Moon-Ju was working overtime translating and she was getting tired. I slept one more night on that wonderfully heated floor (wish Japan had those) and we headed home on the 8th.

So ya, amazing trip and greatly needed. I was kinda surprised how much bitterness came out but feel somewhat better now because of it. I kind of realized on that trip that maybe I should see less different countries and more of countries I have already been to. A lot of my frustrations about Japan I feel stem largely from my small town and current situation. I need to see more of Japan, get out of my prefecture and go somewhere other than Tokyo. The more I learn about other cultures the more I realize how little I know about my own. I would like to say there is more to Canada than hour long lines in the morning at Tim Hortons, or that during winter we hibernate in our insulated centrally heated houses.

But that’s enough! My computer is telling me I wrote 3400 words already and it’s a long weekend! I’m going to get off the computer finally and play some video games ☺ The next update might be on Wednesday not Monday simply because it is the long weekend and I feel I’ve written enough for a while, you and I need a break ;)

"If you start to think that the problem is 'out there,' stop yourself. That thought is the problem." - Stephen Convey

"Yay video games!"
-tnoy

A holly jolly Korean New Year Part 1

Happy New Year! I’m back and feeling rested; I never realized how much I needed a holiday like that. I had a big and crazy adventure; I can only hope to convey a somewhat accurate representation of my exploits as sometimes words or my memory fail me.

Tuesday… the 25th (haha really reaching into the memory banks now eh?) Was one really busy day. I taught four classes and cooked a Christmas feast with my new oven. It didn’t turn out as good as I had hoped but that’s what happens when you try things for the first time… and having to leave the oven unattended for hours on end while teaching. I didn’t have a proper pot to cook the chicken in so I laid it out on some tinfoil, which unfortunately ruined my ability to make gravy. My pirogies had a lot more dough than I would have liked and my potatoes had a strange taste but at the end of the day everyone loved it and I need to share recipes later. I had hoped to go home and bake some cupcakes or something quick and easy for my other school too, but was just too tired after working 8 hours without a break. So that was my Christmas, can’t remember what I did to relax when I got home, I probably played more of that Mario Galaxy ☺

Wednesday I spent over 3 hours driving to and from a friends place 40 Km away or so, so that my kitty Otaku had some care during my extended absence. I am continually amazed what a good kitty she is; after being scared for the first 10 minutes or so in the car, she spent the rest of the trip napping on my lap. Amazing for a cat.

Thursday was a great day for school, my schedule of 4 classes somehow dropped to 1 giving me needed time to catch up on stuff, it was also the night of my bonenkai (year-end party) with Yayoi. There was the now seemingly standard all you can eat dishes of sashimi (raw fish), nabe (kinda like fondu but with food and broth), sushi (rice rolls), and other assorted platters. That night was one of my better experiences in Japan thus far, as there were no English teachers around me so I tried hard to use my Japanese. They would speak to me in English and I would respond in Japanese, it was very neat. I shocked them and myself, not that my skill is very good yet but at least I feel better about my progress. Apparently Bingo is a common door prize game at these parties and I ended up with some office supply prizes.

Friday’s bonenkai was like night and day with this party. Not only was it twice as expensive and I stayed half as long, but also since I was next to an English teacher no body would talk to me without talking to him first. I was very bored for most of it; even when I tried to branch out and talk Japanese to other people, they would stop listening right away and look at the English teacher beside me. Luckily it wasn’t so bad after people started getting drunk and not so afraid of talking to me. One of the table pieces was a fish’s head and tail, in the middle of those erected limbs was neat sashimi pieces. I found it odd, my one English teacher is pretty funny though: “we Japanese are like barbarians, we eat everything raw.” Haha what a guy. He said some people even eat the eyes of that ‘decorative’ fish head.

Saturday Dec29 I was up at 3 a.m. again after being drunk the last two nights in a row… still kind of feeling the effects of that, I headed out on the ½ hour walk to the bus. I told Jake (lives in the same town as me, my travel partner for the trip) to send me a message to make sure I was awake. Everything was all right though but we were sending a message or two back and forth confirming where we would meet, when the bus left, etc. I was about 5 minutes away from my house or so when I got the last message from Jake:

“Alright see you there. Don’t forget your passport.”

I froze. Holy crap you saved the day dude. I dropped my luggage and ran back to my house to get it. At any rate that was a stroke of luck, I would have been 3 hours away at an airport before I would have noticed most likely.

The trip turned out alright, still is kind of tiring waiting so much while half paying attention to where you are. When we arrived one of the first things we did was take a bus to Ulsan (where Moon-Ju lives. Friend of the family, great gal. Cute too!) from Busan where our plane landed. I bought a quick snack at the airport and before I know it the pretty lady working there was trying to give me a juice box. “service” she kept saying even though I didn’t really understand. “Gift?” she thought about it “yes, service” at any rate I got a free juice box and was thinking to myself “ah, how I missed you Korea”

My phone works quite well in Korea and other JETs are rather jealous of me for that. So it was easy to co-ordinate by sending emails for cheap or just calling internationally. Moon-Ju sent me a picture of where we were to get off. We panicked a bit when the bus driver drove by it and confusingly got off the bus when he did stop. I soon felt better though when I saw a girl jumping up and down outside of the bus door waving her arms with a big smile on her face. It was Moon-Ju! I hadn’t seen her for a couple years at least. She picked us up in her new car and told us she just got her license a couple months ago. It was quickly evident as we almost hit a car immediately as we pulled out and then ran a red light turning left soon after (they drive on the right like in Canada). The inside joke of the trip quickly became about taxi cabs as Jake joked how he was scared and Moon-Ju joked back how he should take a cab then ☺ Nah I think she did alright though, people drive pretty crazy in Korea.

Moon-Ju has a style of talking that more people need; blunt and honest. Pearls of wisdom shared with us included “this is my mom’s favorite singer, she is ugly” and “I don’t know why he did that, maybe he is boasting because you are foreigners.” But I shouldn’t talk about other people that much I suppose; at any rate hanging out with her was always fun and informative. We taught her “real” English that included slang words like “lamer” and different ways to express how cold it is… ;) not so politely of course.

So first off we went for Kristy’s favorite food. (Patty’s friend now living in Calgary) It was Korean BBQ with the grill in the middle of the table, not unlike what Chris and I had in China. You cook the meat on the grill and mix it with lettuce, sauces, and other side dishes strewn about the table. One thing you notice about eating in Korea right away are the side dishes; one night at a pub we ordered French fries because all pubs expect you to buy food if you are going to have alcohol. We got the cheapest dish on the menu (French fries) one of the side dishes was a deep fried chicken. I wish I were making this up; they served a whole chicken as a SIDE DISH for French fries. Other side dishes for those fries were a bowl of ice cream, soup, and other dishes you see quite often like dried fish and kimchi (spicy cabbage mix, it is like rice in china/japan; you have it with every meal). At first I thought the kimchi was kinda gross being cold and soggy but it was surprising how fast I warmed up to it, in fact I’m kinda craving it now thinking about it, but I digress.

So we went to leave the restaurant and Moon-Ju forgot that her lights were on ☺ It was the 4th time that week and she called her dad for a boost. She said it was lucky we were with her otherwise he would have been more angry. That gave us time to walk around and scout the area. We enjoyed the colorful signs and interesting names like “girl & beer” bar and got familiar with chain stores like “WA bar” which was on every block it seemed where there were restaurants. Later we met up with her dad and then her mom, she had practiced some English all week to greet us. It was funny being at her workplace as our mere presence was enough to shock and scare away some of the other employees. One fella actually started running away as soon as he was out the door and we were told his face was bright red for hours after. Super shy or something ☺

We explored more of Ulsan, seeing light displays and other goodies, even riding a Ferris wheel on top of a building in the middle of the city later on. I like seeing night views of cities and I like aerial views even more so it was very cool, lots of neon lights everywhere. We went to a pub after and hardly ate anything as they keep giving you food and you are expected to eat when you drink. Another thing we noticed right away is that there are a lot of birthday parties in Korea. They dimmed the lights and played a techno birthday song (different each time) at least 4 times in the hour we were there and they had sparklers. Moon-Ju had her birthday a couple days before we got there and said she had 4 parties thus far ☺ We pushed for another one but we decided against it considering how much food in front of us already wasn’t being eaten.

The next day (Sunday) we went with her parents to a famous temple/city in Korea: Gyeongju. There are building codes there where everything needs a traditional style roof… even the gas stations! Pretty neat to see, although the fringes of the city were seeing more leniency to that code and were more of the same you’d see in Ulsan. The place was pretty cool and we did ‘traditional’ things like place rocks in a pile. How it worked was there were many piles and you make a wish. You then take a small rock and put it on top of a pile and it comes true. I managed to do a rather difficult one so my fingers are crossed ;) I noticed in Korea superstition is aimed more towards wishes and not luck, a stark contrast to China. The temple we were at is famous for a monk character depicted on many paintings around Korea. You hang a picture of him in your room and he keeps away bad dreams, not unlike a dream catcher. But he also wards off “underground streams” or something; forces in the earth that sap your energy. But ya he looked creepy at first but now he looks pretty bad-ass; what he did was cut off his eyelids so he wouldn’t get sleepy. I wish I had bought a picture while we were there now but oh well.

We went to a nearby museum and saw things from ancient Korea and many students working on their winter vacation homework. Again, more homework specifically for their holidays, the outrage eh? ☺ They seemed pretty cool and it was awesome watching them write Korean letters on their paper, that alphabet is really cool. We went for “low fish” after, which is Korean sashimi I suppose, raw fish of sorts. Although there were more side dishes than raw fish it was still a good meal and there was a lighthouse in the background out the window overlooking the vast ocean. I’ve never really seen a limitless ocean from ground level before without islands in the background or something so it was pretty cool.

Monday came, New Years Eve, and everyone had to work; So Jake and I slept in and later indulged ourselves by watching Korean television. They have video games on channel 71 (ya I remember these things) all day long, 99% of the time it was Starcraft battles. For those who don’t know, Starcraft is a video game over 10 years old by now maybe and is almost a part of Korean culture itself, more on that later. The commercials were weird and wacky and usually TV shows or movies with Korean actors were riddled with bad acting; amusing to watch especially when you don’t understand what is going on. (pictured: me, jake, Moon-Ju, her parents)

Moon-Ju came and picked us up a little after lunch so that we cold see her university, the University of Ulsan (I think). It was quite a nice campus; we got a guided tour of at least three of the buildings. One building we went in had a picture of AIP 2005 on the wall. Haha yes, my sister Melissa is posted and laminated on that wall in the University; immortalized for the ages. It was funny I couldn’t see pictures of other years that have went, only the 2005 group. Anyways I took pictures and they’re posted along with the other photos; I took 750 photos on my trip and have since deleted almost 200 of those (blurry, duplicate, etc).

We met our tour guide and he said I look a lot like my sister, a comment that was expressed and echoed a couple times during my stay, even from Moon-Ju’s parents. While I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or not to look like a girl, I made sure to point out Melissa has more hair than me while showing my back hair. :O Just kidding Melissa.

After the tour and when Moon-Ju was done work we went to a pottery place to make things out of clay… ☺ Pottery is self-explanatory I suppose, anyways I started making a beer mug but boy that took a long time, my project was abandoned later when the teacher showed up and started using the spinning machine… thing to make cool pots right in front of us ☺ Moon-Ju and Jake gave it a try but I decided against it, maybe good thing too because we went to a New Years party right after with a bunch of her high school friends and she had a bunch of clay on her black pants ☺

The food was good and so was the company, it was Jake and I to about 7 different good-looking girls (including Star who I met last time! yay!). We wowed them a bit with what little Korean we had learnt the last couple days (na nun tony ya = I am tony; very roughly). It was cool too, my students wrote some Korean words on paper for me that they translated on their cell phones. Important things to say like “thank you” and “I love you” ☺ Those kids are great. Funny thing about that though, when I tried to use their words I “sounded Japanese” because the Japanese way of saying things uses their alphabet; “cream” becomes “kurimu” in Japanese kind of like “camsamnida” in Korean became “camusamonida”.

We later went for Korean karaoke, of which there was no nomihodai like Japan (all you can drink alcohol). It was still a lot of fun though and if you want to see something REALLY awesome, get a small cute Korean girl to do gangster rap for you ☺ oh man that was something else, she liked singing and was good so she did more than one song. Also teaching and getting a bunch of Korean girls to "raise the roof". All the girls save for Moon-Ju had to leave and go home though… before midnight on New Years Eve. Apparently all their mom’s would lock them out if they were out late but Moon-Ju had the “there are foreigners with me” card to play so she was safe, although her mom did call a couple times later that night to check up I believe. We went to a bar and convinced the bartended to play the countdown at least and we handed out sparklers to other patrons so they could join in. We counted down later in the night after I found my first Canadian beer since leaving Canada (it was moose head and it was over $7 but oh well). It wasn’t too terribly exciting and there weren’t many other places to go; one other foreigner was drunk and said rather vulgar things once stumbling to our table, but one point was kind of clear “does this look like new years or just a normal Tuesday night?” (pictured: moon-ju, star and friends raising the roof)

Ah well, so we later went to a bar with dancing (apparently kinda hard to find) and busted moves past 3 in the morning when we had to leave. Couples in Korea wear the same clothes here it is weird ☺ I have heard about it in Japan but haven’t seen it yet. Anyways sometimes they’ll go so far as the same shoes, backpacks and everything. That bar was cool; I somehow got 3 free tequila shots, maybe because it was 2008! (woo!) Some cute girls came up to me asked where I was from and another question. Bars are the worst places for talking and worse yet when there is a language gap, I regretfully made them repeat their question 3 times and ended up just guessing what it was. I guessed wrong though as all previous excitement in their cute eyes was instantly replaced with confusion and awkwardness. They quickly turned around and that was that. I still had fun though; Moon-Ju is a great dancer.

Well maybe this is enough for now, good way to end the year and not drive you mad with endless reading ;) Part 2 might be up tomorrow, see if I have time or not, I have to pick up my kitty and tutor my genki kids again.

"Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience." -Brain Tracy

tnoy