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.