back in familiar Japan

Who would have thought that arriving in Japan would give me feelings of returning home? When i descended the escalator to customs, a sign above me read in Japanese "Welcome Home," and underneath it was some Korean, and underneath that was the English "Welcome to Japan." It made me feel like something more than just a regular gaijin, wide-eyed and hesitant, entering a foreign land of mystery. I was returning to something like a home, albeit a strange and foreign one, though not exactly mysterious anymore. It felt somewhat refreshing to be surrounded by a language i partially understood, a language which was composed of sounds i knew, instead of a language that didn't register anything cerebral at all besides the interesting rhythm and how funny the sounds were.

I'm sitting in the Excelsior Cafe in Narita Airport above Terminal 71, the one that connects to the plane leaving for New York in an hour and a half. I've been thinking about this experience as a whole--trying to piece together all the bizarre experiences and memories floating around in my mind in an effort to stitch them into some patchwork quilt that represents a kind of lesson. But perhaps that's effort wasted, and i should let them float around on their own and bump into each other, creating collisions that produce little bursts of sudden revelation--the sheer entropy of memory that assembles and dissolves periodically to fuel our creative thought for the future.

And on that unnecessarily complex and pseudo-philosophical note, i will end this blog and return home once again. Thank you, my loyal readers, and i hope these entries have taught you a thing or two about Japan and Korea, or at least about how one American distorts and perverts their images.

さようなら！
Sayonara!

kimchi to the max!!!

In no elegant order, here are some things i have either done or learned in Seoul.

1. went to the kimchi museum in Coex mall with Jae's sister Minsun and her friend (Jae is a friend from HIF who volunteered the sightseeing services of his younger sister to me when i told him i was coming to Seoul). Coex is an enormous complex that includes a fancy hotel, restaurants, a kimchi museum, a shopping area, a movie theater, an aquarium, and a kimchi museum. this museum has plastic models of every kimchi dish ever conceived by the Korean mind, and even has a computer program that painstakingly details all the ingredients of every dish and the technique with which to create them. we sat next to two Japanese, and the daughter was reading the list of kimchi dishes off to her mother with fascination and zeal. i asked them how to get the movie about kimchi running and they then both expressed to me their love of kimchi and talked with me about mine. this museum is a place where everyone in the world can assemble and appreciate pickled cabbage together.

2. We then went hiked up to Seoul Tower, which rises up above the city atop a mountain in the city center. Minsun's friend related to me how Seoul's skyline is all helter skelter (not using those particular words), spreading out in all directions and making the city look like some petri dish culture left in the heat, unlike the managed hedgerow look of NYC. The bathroom below the viewing area was arguably the most impressive lavatory i've ever pissed in: glass windows allowing a view of the entire city, urinals complete with small image of fly for aiming purposes, a sink with a hodgepodge of faucets emerging from a center mass of metal. Artful and pleasing to the senses.

3. Don't drink too much soju and then go to a bar with a group of foreigners you just met and stay out until 3 am talking to Korean girls who are used to manipulating foreigners into buying them drinks.

4. The bathroom on my floor of this hostel smells like kimchi that's been soaking in urine in a toilet bowl. The funny thing is, there is no kimchi to be found in the entire hostel! I mean, i have not done a thorough search or anything, but i am mystified.

5. Only two more days in Seoul and i must make the best of them. I was kindly invited out to dinner by Jae's family Sunday night, and i am excited about that. Today i plan to venture into a Korean onsen (spa/sauna sort of thing) with my Italian friend and maybe the Finnish dude from our room. Oh, we're leaving now.

And this concludes today's list of lessons learned and experiences well achieved.

say kimchee!

Instead of "say cheese," Koreans say "say kimchee!" That's an example of the extent to which kimchee is essential to everyday life in this fair country. Every meal comes with a number of side dishes, one of which being kimchee, and the others being any number of things, from steamed spinach to little silvery fishes. But enough about spicy pickled cabbage. Let's talk about my stay in Seoul.

Soeul is a real warm place, compared to the cold inhuman feeling much of Tokyo gives me (besides Asakusa and other small neighborhoods like Harajuku). People here seem pretty carefree and happy. All couples hold hands mostly without exception (Japan not so--some do, but most don't), people bump into you without apologies (like New York! feels like home--in Japan you almost always get a vocal apology, and sometimes even some frantic bowing), street vendors aplenty selling everything from huge dried octopus tentacles to meats on sticks to sweet rice drinks (in Japan, you'd usually only find vendors near temples or shrines or during festivals). Seoul just has an atmosphere of liveliness produced by the residents themselves. In Tokyo, this atmosphere felt to me as if it were generated by glowing signs and towering structures, and the residents just droned about consumed with the action of consumption. This conclusion may be a bit harsh, and that is because i am having a good time here and had a disappointing time every time i've been to Tokyo. And this has no bearing on my opinion of the rest of Japan. Anyone who read the previous blogs knows well my undying love for Kyoto.

So far i've been to Chongdeokgung Palace with its "Forbidden Garden" (in older days only the king and his officers could prance around in its greenery, but now it is a bit less forbidden as everyone from me to groups of Japanese tourists can prance around in there too), the pedestrian cobblestone streets of the art district Insadong with its trendy cafes and stationary stores, the foreigner-flooded nightlife district of Itaewon, and an enormous mall/country called Coex by the Korean World Trade Center at Samseong where i met with the sister of a friend from HIF who volunteered to show me around town. I'll be going to a Korean Folk Museum with her and her friend tomorrow, and possibly even to the Kimchee Museum (i know, when i heard the name of this place i knew it was my destiny to go) at some point before i leave.

I depart in four days, and then i spend an ill-fated night in Tokyo before my return to NYC. I haven't decided if i'm going to get a hostel room or brave a bench in Haneda Airport. Either way, i am aching to return to the place of my birth and be surrounded on all sides once again by my own language. And then get tired of it all in a couple of days and want to go traveling again.

Hanguk: First Blood

Hanguk = Korea

So for better or worse, I am now residing in Seoul, the bustling capital city of South Korea. What a different experience it is arriving in Korea compared to Japan. When i arrived in Japan, i was embarrassed because of my insufficient language ability. When i entered Korea, i was immediately struck by my SUPREME LACK of language ability. Compared to a feeling of powerlessness or inferiority in Japan, knowing none of the spoken language is instead a horrifying affair. I realized i didn't even know how to say "yes" or "no." Yes, i should've prepared by learning the basics, but who has the time or the patience? I will write down the Korean alphabet (hangul) after i write this blog and study it meticulously until i can chant the words off a restaurant menu flawlessly, naturally being entirely ignorant as to its meaning. Much like reading from a siddur. Or having a bar mitzvah. Except instead of money from relatives you get a plate of kimchee.

I spent yesterday in Tokyo, and it was a pretty typical traveling day for me. Instead of taking the ordinary path and going to see the city sights or stroll in the city center, i decided to lug my bags around town looking for a locker to store them in for a week, only to find out the limit was 3 days, and then lugged them back to the hostel. I brought my megaton black luggage case and a plastic bag with a ceramic bowl i made to Tokyo Station, which is across town on the subway, and the route features a number of flights of stairs. So there i was, dragging a heavy bag on wheels and carrying a ceramic bowl in a plastic bag in the other hand, for about 3 or so hours all around Tokyo. I finished off the day by buying a small bag of "Flavors of the Sea" peanuts, and sat on the train home eating them as Japanese sneered at me for eating in public. I did learn a lesson though: there is nothing like "Flavors of the Sea" peanuts to make one's breath attractive.

I left the hostel this morning (with the megaton luggage and the ceramic bowl) and was speeding off towards the station when, quite characteristically of me, i realized that i wasn't quite sure which of the two Tokyo airports i was departing from. I rushed into the nearest internet cafe, and after begging the guy to use the net for 2 minutes for free, grudgingly paid the 200 yen and discovered it was just as i thought: Narita airport, not Haneda. I conveniently planned my trip so that i would be sampling all of the airports in Seoul and Tokyo, leaving from Narita, arriving in Incheon, leaving from Gimpo, arriving in Haneda. In reality, i bought the cheapest ticket, and now i must suffer through not two, but four airports in 7 days. I think i unconsciously make traveling hard on myself because i like to kvetch in blogs.

I plan to go out and get something to eat, hopeful soaked in kimchee whatever it is, and then take a stroll around town or something (without luggage for once). More later.

too many festivals

In the past five days I have been at two different festivals: Hakodate's Minato Matsuri (Port Festival) celebrating Commodore Perry's forceful opening of Hakodate's port some 150 years ago that helped spark the modernization of Edo-period Japan, and Aomori's Nebuta Matsuri (Float Festival) which features enormous paper floats lit up at night with internal lights depicting scenes from old tales involving ogres, dragons, and samurai all fighting each other. The highlight of the Minato Matsuri is the Ika Odori (Squid Dance), which is open to anyone with the desire to jump around in the streets to music with an obnoxious singer singing about squid. As you can imagine, this was exactly my cup of tea. I wrote a short piece inspired by the Ika Odori the other day:

The music blaring from the megaphone vans resounded through the cool night air, booming in the ears of the squid dancers, who were dressed in a variety of eccentric garb, ranging from handmade representations of squids themselves complete with dangling paper tentacles, to black coats with Halloween masks. Although from the inside of the bumping mass of dancers everything seemed chaotic and unrehearsed, from the outside everyone more or less followed the same dance routine, prompted by an energetic announcer shouting encouragement and repetitious chants from a podium atop the moving van.The unavoidable thirty-second song that dictated the dance moves was characterized by a sassy-sounding singer with a friendly country twang singing over electric guitar riffs and electronic beats. Sweat was flying, costumed power rangers of all colors were leaping, men with excessive make-up and grapefruit breasts were all hopping to the left, then the right.
Before I got involved all we saw were dancing troops that were quite well coordinated. I was initially standing with some gaijin friends on the sidelines when the squid dancing crowd spit out a fellow classmate, who must have been swallowed on her way to the station and upon seeing us expressed her fervent desire to join the dancing in their contagious prancing and vigorous stepping, but lamented the lack of opportunity for a group of street-clothed gaijin to jump into a group of coordinated dancers with matching costumes. It seemed less than appropriate to barge in and selfishly ruin the synchrony for the unjustifiable reason that we wanted to dance too. In effect, she assumed that we all wanted to dance with equal desire, and it was probably a safe assumption: we had been standing there gawking at the festivities smiling and gape-jawed with eyes asparkle and leg muscles tense. The mood was saturated with anticipation. So when the coordinated troops has passed and a shrieking, leaping crowd of varied wear, zealous air and dubious manners reared their mass at the head of the parade street led by a huge van displaying cartoon squids in festival dress, we knew that this was our chance.

It's kind of in reverse, but that just adds to the anticipation. I will write about the Nebuta Matsuri a bit later, as time is now running thin, but it was equally as thrilling. Love to all.