I finally put a few clips together of the small snail-fest from last week. I’ll eat a lot of the things the Koreans eat, but not this. The green slime algae on the shells just made my stomach roll. On this trip to Pohang, there were two girls, grand daughters of MyeongHee’s friends. I thought it interesting that both would scream at the sight of a spider in the house but slurp down the juice from a slimy snail shell and then eat the bug inside.
After watching this, go back and check out the really beautiful wedding photos in the previous post. I’d hate for you to leave a website with a bad taste in your eyes.
On Friday we got out wedding photographs back from the studio. Despite the fact that we spent almost nine difficult and hot hours dressing, posing and smiling, the photos came out beautifully and it was well worth the effort. We are both really pleased with them. Maybe I’m prejudiced, but I haven’t seen anyone’s wedding shots done as well. For our money we got a leatherbound album, a large framed 20×40 print that we’ve hung on the wall and a stand-up partition filled with a half-dozen 8x10s.
One amazing little side note. MyeongHee had been saving her money for these pictures. They cost around US$1500. How long had she been saving? She started a layaway plan with the studio almost three years ago. Unbeknownst to me, shortly after I went back to the US in 2005, she decided that she and I would marry and would begin saving. Premonition? Sixth sense? Or just love? I tend to think the latter.
Back in my first tour in Korea in 2004/05, I wrote a few articles for the Ulsan Pear. That paper is now defunct but a new medium has risen to fill the void. The Korea Sun is a new, all English, Korea-wide publication that will focus on the arts/entertainment, festivals & events, travel, night life and culture. Not just a paper rag like the Pear, the Korea Sun is a slick-glossy magazine style full of interesting photographs of this country. Although it’s written by foreigners, the vast majority of readers are Korean.
The Korea Sun has been out since March or April of this year. They’ve only published a few months so far. I took a wait-and-see attitude and sat on the sidelines and just read the magazines as they came out and I didn’t contribute. The photos are always great, it has news on events that I otherwise never would have heard of and reviews of restaurants I might never have even found. But the writing, mostly done by English teachers like me here in Korea, was hit or miss. Some of the grammar was really horrid. When the July issue came out, I found enough errors in the writing, some of them egregious, factual errors, that I felt compelled to write the editor. I expressed amazement that some of the writers actually teach English here. What I thought would result in merely a letter to the editor in the next issue resulted in a face-to-face meeting with the publisher. We talked about his vision for the magazine, his problems with motivating the (mostly) young writers and how he needed someone to ride herd on the process of writing, article selection and editing. We decided I could be that man.
Beginning this week, and starting with the October issue of the Korea Sun, I am now the Editor-in-Chief. I’ll be organizing and motivating the writers, and writing my own articles as well as the editor’s page in the front. No pay. It’s all volunteer. But it’s something to add to the resume, the scrapbook and the memory banks. And a bonus, it keeps me out of the pool halls.
Two days later and I still hurt. My own fault, of course, so I’m not bitching, just reporting the news. MyeongHee put cucumber slices on me last night to help cool the heat. Today, we have lots of cucumber kimchi to eat.
I’m still kicking myself in the ass for not putting on sunscreen.
Or damn close to it. On the tail-end of my week vacation we spent the weekend at MH’s mom’s house on the coast. Like a dork, I spent about 1 1/2 or so hours in the sun with no sunscreen or shirt. I might have a picture later. Right now I can’t imagine even moving enough to pose for a picture. My back is really red.
It was fun, though. Her house is just a few steps from the beach and we played in the surf for a while.
We also ate a lot. We went with three of MyeongHee’s friends and two of their granddaughters. We had 7 people in the car! Like most Korean women they all planned food/drinks and whatnot so there was lots to eat. I ate everything they made – except for one thing. The Snails! I still squirm at the way the women, even the little girls, plucked these spiral wormy-looking snails from their green mossy shells and drank the juices from it before devouring the snail. I couldn’t get past the slimy moss on the shells. I couldn’t think of eating one. My dog wouldn’t eat it either. I have that on film.
Remember this one? If you’re around my age or older and American, you probably do. I was only 11 years old when this commercial came out. It had a profound affect on me. I remember watching this man crying and then, from the back seat of the family station wagon as we drove to various places, I saw it. I’d never actually thought about it before. The Trash. But there was quite a bit of trash in America back then. I didn’t cry at the realization like the man did, but it changed me. That was 1971. And I have to say that while America is no gleaming example of cleanliness, we somehow figured out as a nation that pollution is not doing us or the planet any good. Whether we can get our government to agree and help protect what’s left is an entirely different discussion. But, I digress.
I’d been very hesitant to write about this, but it’s been bugging me for a while. I figure it’s their country, I’m a guest in it and I shouldn’t disparage the people with whom I coexist and earn my living from. Our recent trip to Japan, however, really made me see things clearly. I had gotten desensitized by seeing so much of it in Korea that the lack of it in Japan surprised me. The return trip, of course, surprised me again, as if I were seeing that same crying Indian commercial. This time, though, I felt a little sad. The Trash. It WAS Everywhere. Our eyes burned from the dirty air in Busan and Ulsan, something we hadn’t even realized we had escaped from. This place needs a little self respect for community. Just some examples that I captured over the months.
The picture above looks better than it is. Despite the presence of a trash bag, quite a few can’t seem to get things all the way into the bag and not just near it. Even more disturbing, there’s another bag just 20 steps away. Can’t take the trouble to go too far in either direction. But at least they moved somewhat towards the bag.
These filthy late night snackers couldn’t even be bothered to take their trash towards the bag when they got up from the table.
And it’s not an isolated incident. Above is the same table, two days later. The previous trash was just kicked under the table and stepped on. But it’s not just the tables. In fact, it’s everywhere.
Piles of trash accumulate in the streets and sidewalks. It’s common to see someone exit a convenience store and as they unwrap their newly bought snack the wrappers go straight to the ground. Vendors may sweep their storefront, and even wash it with a hose, but it goes no further than the street. Now, that’s not to say it’s everywhere and that all Koreans are at fault. Not at all. But it’s enough of a problem that I can’t address it one by one (and I’ve done that often enough when I see it.) I watched one kid at the park finish his plastic bottle of juice and then just whip the empty across the park. His father sat right next to me said nothing, either to the kid or to me when I told the kid to put in the trash bag. It’s an educational thing.
Moreover, the trash is such a paradox for me. From my experience, Koreans are very fastidious folk. Their homes, whether simple or splendid, are always tidy and clean. As for their personal hygiene they are squeaky clean. Why so much attention to self and home and such utter disregard for the shared space between us all?
Koreans haven’t apparently figured out their pollution solutions yet. As it happens, I just yesterday saw a public service anouncement on one of the local TV stations that people should pitch in and clean up. None of the pathos evoked by the 1970s American commercial, but it’s a start. Someone has reconized a problem and has begun addressing it, although the outcome is far from clear. They still seem apathetic about littering. I’m hoping that a few Koreans actually read this and maybe see for themselves so much can be done by ourselves simply by just not throwing it on the ground in the first place.When that’s done, we’ll worry about the air.
Koreans need a crying Indian of their own that they can identify with.
August is vacation time for many in Korea. My school closes down and I usually get half of my yearly vacation in the first week of August. While last year was a fabulous trip to Beijing, this year was a much more scaled down trip to Japan. We left on Friday, August 1st and went to Fukuoka on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. It’s pronounced “Foo Koh Ka” in case any of you foul-mouthed readers wanted to say something else. I would never stoop to such middle-school behavior <grin>.
Rather than fly, we took the jetfoil boat out of Busan. That was fun as the boat was both smooth and fast. Same sort of terrorist prevention applies, however, and baggage Xray, metal detectors and immigration/customs red tape provided the usual fun.
One of the first things we noticed about Japan was how clean the place was. Korea is nice, but rarely do people go out of their way to find a trashcan and rubbish is everywhere. Not a speck of trash was anywhere in Fukuoka. I may write another post on Korea’s trash as it’s something that’s been bugging me for a while.
The second thing we noticed was the cost. Everything was more expensive, from the buses, taxis and subways to the food and other shopping. Gone were the noisy open markets of Korea and in their place we found gleaming malls and glitzy department stores. We’re used to a decent lunch costing $3-4 per person but the cheapest we could find was 2x that for just noodles. Substantial meals were substantially higher. We spent a lot more than we thought we would. Bummer, but it didn’t damper the fun.
Once on land, we quickly started checking out the sights. We visited the a Zen Buddhist temple, a shrine (I still don’t understand the difference as they look the same to me) museums and gardens. The peacefulness and tranquility of these was a fabulous change from the hectic travel of just getting there. At night, we went to Higashi Nakasu, a neighborhood in the city famous for its restaurants and clubs. Most of the clubs we found were the type for men. Lots of bar girls there to keep them company. Not necessarily bad girls, not strip clubs, just their culture that men are more likely to stay and buy drinks if there’s a friendly, pretty girl to keep them company. We saw hundreds, dressed as graceful geishas, or glamorous gals or just plain cutesy.
Then we went shopping. I have yet to find a “mall” in Korea, but Fukuoka’s Canal City mall was fabulous. My favorite was the houseware/cooking store that offered cooking classes.
These two cuties were in the middle of their lesson. It apparently turned out pretty good as they wasted no time in cleaning their bowls.
We spent a lot of time shopping at the mall. MyeongHee bought several tops for herself. Reminded me of home to be in one large mall again. The prices were ridiculous, but what the hell. She makes her own money.
We also spent some time at Ohira park. We rode a paddleboat around what once was a part of the bay but was closed off nearly a hundred years ago. The pond was modeled after China’s West Lake in Houngzhou, which Marco Polo made famous in his travels. I thought there was some similarity from my visit there in 2004.
Although we were only there 3 days and two nights, we had a good time but were more than ready to come home. Neither of us speaks or reads Japanese and we found only a smattering of folks who spoke either English or Korean. It was sometimes difficult just to get around in the buses and taxis. Most people assumed MyeongHee to be Japanese and spoke to her in their language. She learned from last year’s trip to Beijing that a useful phrase to learn was “I am Korean” and she spoke that often. She did know a few words and phrases and she had a J/K phrase book with her that helped. Still, the difficulty of a language that shares nothing with either of ours was tiring. I learned Korean well enough that I can read quite a bit and get around. It was frustrating not to be able to read street signs or place names and understand where we were. The bright side was that people were exceedingly friendly and helpful, even if they couldn’t speak either of our languages
Then there was the exchange rate to deal with. I still think in terms of dollars, which run about 1000 Korean won per dollar. Japanese Yen are about 100 to the dollar and more than once the number of zeros on a price made me think twice before buying. An ATM mistake cost me about $20 in exchange fees when I withdrew 10X more than I needed and had to change in back in Korea. Oh well.
We had fun but we resolved to go elsewhere next time we travel. Hopefully, that will be to America next year for Teri’s college graduation.
I made a short video of the highlights of the trip. Check it out and tell me what you think.
