The Japan Saga, Part III: Snow Monkeys and a Public Bath

What do you get when you combine the following elements:  natural hot springs, a picturesque mountain forest blanketed in clean white snow, and wild Japanese macaques (snow monkeys)?  Answer:  You get the single coolest day of my Japan trip.

Around a decade ago, I saw a film called Baraka.  Maybe you’ve heard of it.  It’s done in a style that’s usually called “pure cinema” – meaning there are no characters, no plot, no storyline or narration.  Instead, themes are explored through the use of vivid imagery accompanied by music.  That’s it.  Anyway, Baraka opens up with a very memorable scene of red-faced primates relaxing (there’s no other word to describe it) in a steaming pool of water surrounded by snow.  The scene is very surreal.  The camera zeros in on a monkey’s face as he closes his eyes and exhales – an uncannily human-like expression of contentment that I found unforgettable.  (See a clip here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG9P7JWtxhw)

This short scene impressed me deeply at the time, for reasons I can’t fully articulate.  I had never seen images of primates in such surroundings– I was accustomed to seeing them in tropical environments, the jungles of the Amazon or Indonesia, the African bush, etc.  But surrounded by snow?  That was different.  It was easy enough for me to discover that these scenes were filmed at a very specific location in Japan, where a certain population of macaques (the northernmost dwelling primate on Earth, except for humans) is known to frequent a certain hot spring year-round.  When I began planning my itinerary for Japan, this information came back to me, and I decided that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see with my own eyes a beguiling scene that had lodged itself so firmly in my memory years before.

And so it was that on the day after I visited Hiroshima, I found myself on a rather lengthy train ride to Yudanaka.  Due to the remoteness of the so-called monkey hot springs, this was probably the most ambitious destination of my Japan itinerary.  As well-known as the snow monkeys are, this place is a bit removed from the well-beaten tourist path.  Many of the people who visit Nagano Prefecture do so for the skiing, not for the monkeys.   Yudanaka is therefore not the most easy-to-get-to place.  I had to take a Shinkansen train from Toyohashi to Nagoya, then transfer to the Shinano line bound for Nagano (host of the 1998 winter Olympics).  About 30 minutes before reaching Nagano, the train came out of a tunnel and I was treated to a spectacular view of the city nestled in a snowy valley enclosed by the towering Japanese Alps.  Nice.  Once in Nagano, I had to catch a slow local train (not covered by my rail pass) to Yudanaka Onsen, a small, remote hot spring town near the monkeys. 

I immediately set out in search of my accommodation.  As I walked along the road, I noticed the sound of rushing water.  There were gutters on either side of the street that had natural hot spring water flowing through them.  It also came pouring out of spouts located at seemingly random spots along the road, generating plumes of steam everywhere.  After a short walk, I found the place I was looking for.  I had booked a room at Shimaya Ryokan – a traditional Japanese inn.  When I arrived, I was greeted by the energetic, animated owner, Ichiro-san Yumoto.  He bombarded me with questions about where I’m from, where I’ve been in Japan, where else I plan to go.  He informed me that, though I had requested accommodation in the male dorm, another guest had requested to rent out the entire dorm for his group.  I therefore got bumped up to a private room at no additional cost.  I love when things just happen to work out in my favor like this.

My private room at Shimaya Ryokan

My room was beautiful and cozy --   a tatami-matted floor, a low table with a tea set, and a paper-partition sliding door concealing a sort of “breakfast nook” and a balcony.  After taking a quick look around, I dropped my luggage on the mattress and headed back downstairs to the lobby.

One of the reasons I had chosen to stay at this place, other than for the traditional ryokan experience, was because Mr. Yumoto offered a free shuttle to the monkey park – which otherwise would’ve been much more difficult to reach by way of public buses.  We hopped in his van, just the two of us, and he drove me through Yudanaka and the adjacent Shibu Onsen (pointing out various places of interest along the way) before eventually turning up a steep mountain road.  Before long, we came to a massive sign reading “Jigokudani Yaen Koen.”  This was the entrance to the monkey hot spring.  It’s not possible to drive all the way up to the spot where the monkeys are, so I had the pleasure of walking 1.6 km on a pretty forest path in the light of a fading afternoon. 

Wild macaque sighting!

As I neared the onsen, I started spotting monkeys from a distance.  They were numerous, dotting the hillside, the river bank, and the trail ahead.  I couldn’t believe how many there were.  Suddenly, I heard a noise behind me and turned to see a macaque scurrying toward me on the rail that ran along this part of the trail.  I stood still and held my breath as he got nearer.  He paused briefly by my side and graciously allowed me to snap a quick photo before continuing on his way.  This was my first personal encounter with a wild primate – an item checked off my bucket list.

It’s a rare experience in life to have something that you’ve subconsciously treated with so much anticipation to actually exceed expectations.  But this was one of those times.  The hot spring, while small, looked every bit as striking and picturesque as I remembered from the scene in Baraka.   Steam rose from the surface; snow fell softly all around; the monkeys lounged languid and idle in their soak.  There were no barriers, nothing to prevent me from getting up close and personal with them.  They generally ignored me and the small number of other humans that were around, going about their business of bathing, playing, foraging for food, posturing and screaming at each other.  There were intimidating big ones.  There were adorable babies.  They ran wildly around chasing each other, brushing against my legs in the process.  It was truly an amazing and unique experience. 

A rare sight:  wild Japanese macaques soaking in a natural onsen.

Not even in a zoo have I ever been able to observe primates at such close proximity.  I was transfixed by their dexterous hands, their human-like facial expressions.  I began to discern distinct personalities.  This one is bold and mischievous; this one is timid and demure; this one is aggressive and short-tempered, an alpha male perhaps.  I can’t begin to describe my level of fascination as I walked among them, studying their behavior, taking their pictures.  The word “surreal” is insufficient. 

I’m not sure how long I stayed there – at least an hour.  Maybe two.  It started to grow dark, and I had to reluctantly return to the trailhead to meet Mr. Yumoto for my ride back into town.  As we pulled up to the ryokan some time later, Mr. Yumoto turned to me with a proposition.  “Soon, I will drive two guests to Tominoyu roten-buro.  It is outdoor hot spring bath with nice view.  Old Japanese tradition, very relaxing.  Will you go?”

 Sure.  Why not.

The two other guests accompanying me to the roten-buro were ethnic Japanese guys from New Zealand.  Those of you who know me personally undoubtedly also know that I’ve had a small obsession with NZ ever since I studied there in 2006.  So I had plenty to talk with them about on the 6 km drive.  (“You lived in Dunedin?  Must’ve been cold.”  “Why is that always the first thing people mention when Dunedin comes up?”)  Once we arrive at the roten-buro, we put money into a ticket-machine (600 yen) and selected what kind of experience we wanted.  We could choose between a public bath or, for quadruple the cost, a private bath.  I opted for the public, as did my kiwi Japanese companions.  I entered the locker room alone as they hung back to smoke cigarettes in the waiting area.

I walked into a locker room filled with stark naked Japanese guys amicably laughing and chatting with each other as they dressed.  They were young – close to my own age, as far as I could tell.  They gave me curious looks as I entered, apparently unaccustomed to seeing a foreigner here.  It was a little odd at first.  In the West, we still tend to view nudity as a private, even shameful thing – a relic notion left over from the Victorian age, or maybe it comes from our Puritanical roots – who knows?  Typically, western men are especially insecure and awkward with their nakedness in the presence of other males.  But these Japanese guys, on the other hand, seemed so comfortable joking with each other with their dangly bits hanging out to air dry.  No shame.  No insecurity.  And why should there be?  Really, none of us had anything that the others hadn’t seen before.  It was actually kind of refreshing how free they were in their nakedness. 

I quickly stripped down and strode unclad into the adjacent washroom.  It was empty.  Along the opposite wall there was a row of removable shower heads, mirrors, a low shelf with soap and shampoo, and several plastic stools.  To the right was a small sauna room.  To the left was the door leading out to the onsen.  Fortunately, I knew what to do because Mr. Yumoto had given me a quick run-down of the routine and told me how to observe proper onsen etiquette.  I sat on one of the stools, washed, and rinsed thoroughly – it’s supposedly unacceptable to enter an onsen while dirty or with traces of soap on your body. 

The next step was to enter the sauna, which was also empty.  Beside the door there was a small hourglass fixed to the wall.  The idea is that you’re supposed to turn the hourglass over when you enter, then exit the sauna once it’s run its course.  I spread out my small towel on the lowest bench (another etiquette thing) and lay down.  After becoming adjusted to the heat, I rose to a sitting position and moved to the top bench, where the heat is more intense.  I couldn’t have been in the sauna for more than 5 or 10 minutes, but it was long enough for my body to go from wet to dry to sweating. 

After the intense heat of the sauna, the cooler air of the washroom felt very refreshing.  By this time, my new kiwi Japanese friends were there going through their shower routine.  The next step for me was to rinse off the sauna sweat with cold water.  I wasn’t too enthused about the cold water part, but Mr. Yumoto insisted that using cold water has therapeutic and health benefits, so I just gritted my teeth and got it over with as quickly as possible.

Stepping through the doorway into the freezing night sucked the air right out of my lungs.  This loss of breath was augmented by the breath-taking view of the twinkling lights of Yudanaka, which could be seen in the valley below from the onsen’s prominent perch on the mountainside.  The bath was dimly lit and quite large, made to look very nature-y with roughly-hewn stones, landscaping, and a waterfall.  Snow lay all around.  The heat of the pool fought an elemental battle with the frigid air, producing huge wafts of steam that swayed and danced fiercely in the breeze. 

There were two men in the pool already – an elderly man submerged chest-deep at the far end, and a young man sitting on the near edge with just his legs dangling in the water.  Neither gave me more than a passing glance as I walked over to a more secluded part of the pool.

At first, the water was excruciatingly hot.  It was almost intolerable.  I had to ease myself in very slowly, and even then it took a while before it became bearable.  Shortly after I entered the pool, the other two bathers left and returned to the shower room.  This allowed me several precious minutes of alone time with the steam and the beautiful view.  I closed my eyes and let the onsen take its effect on my body and mind.  I paid attention to the sound of the wind, the gurgling of the waterfall, the occasional giggles and snippets of hushed conversation coming from the other side of a tall wooden fence where the female bath was located.  I understood why the Japanese had been doing this for centuries – I can’t remember the last time I felt so relaxed and at peace.  I was so absorbed that I hadn’t even notice that the kiwi travelers had exited the washroom and slipped wordlessly into the other end of the pool.

As relaxing as the experience was, the temperature of the water was still just a tad too hot for my taste.  I found it was best to try to remain as still as possible – movement seemed to magnify the heat.  After a while, I raised myself half-way out of the water.  The breeze, which had earlier felt so uncomfortably cold, now felt incredibly good.  I sat that way for a while – my lower half submerged in the hot water, my torso and head exposed to the freezing air.  It began to snow, completing the perfect picture.  In this position, I couldn’t actually feel just how cold that cold breeze really was – it was quite a surprise when I went to run my hand through my hair and discovered that my hair had frozen into icicles. 

Tominoyu roten-buro, with a nighttime view of Yudanaka

I soaked in the bath for around 45 minutes before I climbed out and went inside.  I bypassed the washroom this time – you’re supposed to let the nutrients and minerals of the hot spring water to dry on your skin.  While I was dressing, my two kiwi Japanese companions exited the bath as well.  I took advantage of the onsen being empty to run back out with my camera and snap a photo.  I’m not sure if this was a breach of the rules of etiquette or not.  But I’m glad I was able to capture the scene.

Once exiting the locker room, you’re supposed to sit and relax for a while in a post-bath waiting room.  The waiting room at this onsen facility provided us with drinks (for rehydration) and electric massage chairs.  I sat in one of these chairs with a cup of tea and my ipod, listened to some Sigur Ros, and was lulled into a pleasantly sleepy stupor while waiting for Mr. Yumoto to come pick us up.

One more blog post to go in the Japan Saga series.  Stay tuned.  It'll be up on the site later this week!

The Japan Saga, Part II: Hiroshima

Tahara, seen from the top of Mt. Zou

On Monday morning I awoke to beautiful clear weather.  Micah and I spent the morning traveling by train to the seaside town of Tahara where we met up with one of Micah’s students – an adult cabbage farmer named Shinobu Hirota who greatly enjoys showing foreigners around.  He took us to an observatory at the top of a small mountain where we could view the surrounding area, taking in a view of everything from ocean to mountains to wind turbines to a Toyota plant.  Afterwards we went to lunch at one of those conveyor belt sushi places where you grab whatever you want off the line as it passes your table.  We proceeded to stuff ourselves – Shinobu kept insisting that I try different things.  To my own surprise, I think my favorite was some kind of eel that was melt-in-your-mouth soft and a little bit grainy.  That afternoon, Micah had to go to work, so I packed an overnight bag and caught a train – the world famous Shinkansen bullet train – bound for Hiroshima. 

The Shinkansen bullet train

I was a little nervous about navigating the train stations on my own.  Japan has many different kinds of trains and lines, which doesn’t make things easy for a non-Japanese speaking newbie like me.  However, I was able to take advantage of the website hyperdia.com, which simplifies things by telling you the name of the train you want, what time it leaves, and which platform it departs from.  I managed to get on the right train and successfully make my transfer in Osaka. 

I had arranged to stay with a couch surfing host in Hiroshima via the website couchsurfing.org.  She was a Scottish single mother named Suzi who was working in Hiroshima as a teacher.  I arrived late in the evening, so there wasn’t any daylight left for sightseeing by the time I reached her flat.  Instead, we just hung out at her place drinking tea while pouring over a map of the city.  She showed me how to get to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and recommended a few other sights I might find interesting.  Eventually, I called it an early night and woke up early the next morning to begin my day.  My first stop would be the main attraction of my Hiroshima itinerary:  The Peace Memorial Museum.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

As a long time pacifist, I considered a trip to Hiroshima to be a sort of pilgrimage that I needed to take.  This is, after all, where the nuclear age began, where the single most devastating war-time act in the history of mankind occurred, where thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children were blasted into oblivion by a new technology that to this day remains a very real and potent threat to the future of human civilization.  Since that historic day 67 years ago, Hiroshima has become a global symbol for the horrific consequences of nuclear war.  What many people may not realize is that it is also, and has been since that day, a focal point for the disarmament movement.  Since 1945 every Hiroshima mayor has written a letter of protest to every leader whose country has engaged in some sort of nuclear test – totaling 600 letters and counting (They’re all on display at the museum).  For me, this city embodies so much more than can be put into words.  In the way it has rebuilt itself from the ashes, moved on to become a thriving modern city, and humbly reflected upon itself in a way that has led it to acknowledge its nation’s history while committing itself to an unwavering anti-war stance – these things also make the city a symbol of the desire for peace and of everlasting hope for the future of humanity.  The deepest wish of Hiroshima is for a world free of nuclear weapons and the realization of a genuinely peaceful international community – and no place on Earth has a better reason to wish it.  The Peace Memorial Park, with all its monuments and museums, exists to memorialize the victims of the bombing, to ensure we never forget the horrors of nuclear war, and to advocate world peace.  These are the reasons I wanted to go there.

Don’t worry – I’m not about to get all political on you.  In this blog post, I will seek neither to ethically justify nor condemn the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  The fact is, it happened.  Whether or not it was the right call is irrelevant.  What I aim to do here is to examine the objective facts of that day, based on my newfound deeper knowledge on the subject thanks to the Peace Memorial Museum, and to share with you my humbling experience of standing in the place where the world’s first nuclear holocaust occurred.  I learned details of the event that were previously unknown to me, and I suspect they may be unknown to many of you as well.  Therefore, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share some of them with you. 

The US began looking into the possibility of harnessing atomic power to create a mega-weapon as early as 1939.  It wasn’t until 1942 that Roosevelt got serious enough about it to initiate the Manhattan Project;  he did so after receiving a letter from, of all people, Albert Einstein, who suggested that not only was the goal obtainable, but that the Germans were already making headway in the development of such a weapon.  By the time the bomb was successfully tested on July 16, 1945, Germany had already surrendered, which resulted in Japan being put in the crosshairs. 

The US wanted to end the war as quickly as possible.  Japan was already in an extremely weakened position, but they were refusing to surrender unconditionally.  The US had a few options:  invade the Japanese mainland, which it has been estimated would have resulted in millions of casualties to both Americans and Japanese in addition to being costly; enlist the help of the Soviets, who the Americans were already growing wary of; enforce an international blockade and embargo to weaken the Japanese further, a slow and uncertain tactic; or drop the A-bomb on Japan in hopes that it would psychologically cripple the Japanese, leaving them no choice but to submit to the US’s terms for surrender.  It has been said that the US dropped the bomb to spare the lives of American soldiers that would have been lost in an invasion of the mainland.  It has also been said that an even bigger motive was to demonstrate our power to the Soviets and to end the war decisively without their help, thereby restricting their influence during peace negotiations after the war.  In all reality, these were probably all factors in the decision.  At any rate, the development of the bomb had cost billions of dollars, and domestically if the American government wanted to justify the cost, they needed to prove that it was worth it – which they felt they could do if they could use it to end the war with a single catastrophic blow.

So, why Hiroshima?  Even before World War II, Hiroshima was a military city.  It was also rather renowned as a city of higher education.  Unfortunately for its citizens, it perfectly fit the criteria for an ideal target city (the other potential targets were Kokura, Niigata, Kyoto, and as we all know, Nagasaki).  They were looking for a city that had an urban area at least three miles in diameter which also contained significant strategic military targets.  Furthermore, it was believed that the topography of Hiroshima would have the effect of more intensely focusing the bomb’s impact.  Air raids were prohibited on the potential target cities so that the effects of the bomb could be sufficiently studied and assessed after the event.  So while the rest of industrialized Japan was being heavily bombarded, Hiroshima had been spared until the A-bomb was ready.  Hiroshima ended up being the primary target because it was believed to be the only one of the potential targets which did not contain Allied prisoner of war camps.  Its fate was effectively sealed. 

Models of Hiroshima before and after the atomic bombing

On the morning of August 6, 1945 three planes took off from an airbase on the island of Tinian headed for the Japanese mainland.  One carried scientific instrumentation; another carried photography equipment; the third, the now famous Enola Gay, carried the bomb dubbed “Little Boy.”  Skies over Hiroshima were clear – good visibility for the bombardiers –  and the morning commute was in full swing.  As Little Boy fell through the sky, a nuclear reaction of radioactive uranium was set in motion (the Nagasaki bomb used Plutonium, in case you wanted to know).  At 8:15 a.m. the bomb detonated 600 meters above the center of the city with the force of 16,000 tons of high-performance explosive (which was actually less than expected).  The initial shockwave travelled faster than the speed of sound, instantly leveling virtually everything within a mile of the hypocenter.  The shockwave was accompanied by a fireball 370 meters in diameter that exceeded a million degrees Celcius at its core and between 3500 and 5000 degrees Celcius on the surface (remember, the bomb detonated 600 meters in the air).  The heat rays ignited everything in the vicinity. 12 square kilometers (69% of the city’s buildings) were completely destroyed by the blast and the ensuing firestorm.   It is believed that 70,000-80,000 people (30% of Hiroshima’s population) were killed instantly, including over 90% of the city’s doctors and nurses.  In the following months, many thousands more died from burns and other injuries, bringing the death toll up to 140,000 by the end of December.  This number does not include the thousands who died in the years and decades that followed from leukemia and other cancers as a result of radiation poisoning (a black rain fell in Hiroshima 20-30 minutes after detonation, which was loaded with radioactive substances.  Many people who survived the initial blast were badly burned and in dire need of water – they unknowingly drank the black rain as it fell from the sky). 

The singed remnants of a school uniform

Hearing all these facts is horrible enough.  Seeing the effects on display at the Peace Memorial Museum was truly terrifying, bringing the whole thing into a new realm of palpable reality.  Knowing that each displayed article of singed clothing represented a precious human life (many of them children, innocent victims), embodying incalculable human pain and grief, was moving to say the least.  Seeing video footage of burn victims and cancer patients, before and after models of a city destroyed, first-hand accounts by material witnesses of searching for the remains of loved ones amid the wreckage, roofing tiles that had melted and fused together – all this forced upon me a deep appreciation for the terrible and awesome power of human technology.  It’s incredibly scary what we’re capable of. 

In the decades that followed WWII, extensively more powerful hydrogen bombs were developed, and they still exist by the thousands today – around 90% of them are either in the US or Russia.  We all hope that the world will never again come to a point when the use of these deadly weapons is called for – but if it happened once, it’s surely reasonable to believe it could happen again.  Just look how close we came in 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis.  At any rate, even though there is talk of disarmament, no country is really willing to completely give up its nuclear weapons.  What does this say about humanity?  I’m not sure.  But the fact that our species has enough intelligence to develop such complex and powerful weapons, but is still so primitive as to be incapable of overcoming the tendency to war with one another – it’s frightening and confounding.  We’ve become so technologically advanced that we can split atoms and harness their energy, yet when you get down to it, we’re no more advanced than Cain.  Again, I’m not seeking to either support or condemn the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – I’m merely lamenting the fact that our world ever got to a point where such a thing was considered a necessary evil. If we want to call ourselves civilized, we should commit to the idea that such a tragedy can never be allowed to occur again.  But, alas, human nature is a strange and bewildering beast.  These were the humbling sentiments I took away from my experience at the museum. 

On my way out of the peace museum, I signed my name to a petition calling for an international nuclear weapons convention and nuclear weapon free world by 2020.  I then spent some time in the surrounding park, sitting in quiet reflection before the memorial cenotaph – a saddle shaped monument holding the names of the victims.  I also made a quick pass through the memorial hall, which contains information about the bomb’s victims.  The most impressive part of the memorial hall is the Hall of Remembrance, which features a 360 degree mosaic panorama of the destroyed Hiroshima recreated using 140,000 individual tiles – the estimated number of people who had died as a direct result of the bomb by the end of 1945.  I then strolled over to the iconic structure that was once known as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, but which is now known as the A-bomb dome.  This was the building closest to the hypocenter that was left partially standing, and it has remained in that state to serve as a memorial in its own right.  Unfortunately, at this time it is covered in scaffolding due to its undergoing a routine check for soundness, but it was still cool to actually see this building that is so often featured in black and white photographs taken in the aftermath of the bombing, the lone standing structure adrift in a sea of rubble. 

The A-Bomb Dome

A statue depicting Sadako Sasaki at the Children's

Peace Monument

The last thing I did before leaving the peace park was to pay my respects at Children’s Peace Monument dedicated to the memory of the innocent children that were claimed by the bomb.  At the top of the monument is a statue of a girl with outstretched arms holding up a folded paper crane.  That girl is Sadako Sasaki, and hers is one of the more touching and heart-wrenching stories to come out this event.  There was an entire half-room back in the museum dedicated to her.  Sadako was two years old when the bombing occurred, and she was lucky enough to survive for another decade before radiation-related leukemia began to ravage her body.  She decided to put her faith in the old superstition that said her wishes would come true if she folded 1000 origami paper cranes.  Incredibly, she did this in a month, and when she hit the 1000 mark she kept going.  One of the most impressive things was the extraordinarily small size of many of the cranes on display at the museum – some were smaller than a fingernail.  She lacked paper in the hospital so she used whatever she could get her hands on – medicine wrappings, for example.  She apparently used a needle to fold the smallest ones.  This story, once spread, inspired people the world over, and it’s how the paper crane became a global symbol for hope and peace.  Despite her efforts, Sadako tragically died after an eight-month struggle.  She was 12 years old.  To this day people all over the world (mostly children) fold paper cranes and send them to Hiroshima in her memory. 

Folded paper cranes at the Children's Peace

Monument

At that point, I’d had enough misery for one day and decided to leave the peace park.  It was past lunch time, and I’d had a light breakfast.  There was no question in my mind what I would be having for lunch.  Like every other place in Japan, Hiroshima has a specialty, a certain dish it is known for – here, it’s Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki.  It’s hard to describe, because it’s basically just a jumble of ingredients layered on top of each other, grilled on a hot plate in front of you, pressed into a sort of pancake shape and slathered with okonomiyaki sauce.  After searching around for a bit, I found an okonomiyaki place that I’d read about online.  It was nothing more than a small kitchen with a counter, and when I got there the counter was full -- which is usually a good sign, since it’s typically the case that the quality of the food a place serves is directly proportional to number of people queuing up to eat it.  I squeezed in at the counter between a group of Japanese high school boys and a group of tourists from Hong Kong.  One of the boys spoke English reasonably well, and he really went out of his way to help me go over the options on the menu (I think he was just enjoying the opportunity to practice his language skills).  I told him I wanted the Hiroshima special, so he translated my order for the lady on the other side of the counter.  What I got was a massive pile of food: cabbage, pork, squid, soba noodles, bean sprouts, and egg, all prepared in the way described above.  The Hong Kong tourists also spoke a decent amount of English, so I was able to enjoy my lunch while having a very lively conversation – they even asked me to teach them some Korean phrases, which made me feel all cool and international.  This positive human interaction was a very welcome antidote to the rather heavy morning I’d had at the peace museum. 

Lunch!  Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki

The reconstructed Hiroshima Castle

Speaking of heavy – I was undoubtedly a few pounds heavier myself by the time I finished that meal.  I had a couple more hours to kill before I was due back at the train station for my return to Toyohashi, so I spent the time doing what I typically do when I’m traveling in a new place – I wandered.  At one point I walked into a 100 yen store, which is like a Japanese version of the dollar store, only they sell stuff that you actually want to buy.  This one was enormous – 8 stories tall.  I bought myself a pair of gloves.  Before arriving at the train station I also chanced upon Hiroshima Castle.  This was a reconstruction – the original structure that had been built in the 1500s was destroyed in the 1945 bombing.  But it was still a nice place to walk around, being set in a large park and surrounded by a mote.

And that was Hiroshima.  Wow, and I’m just now realizing how long this entry is.  I know this blog post was a bit of a bummer, but I think it’s important to acknowledge and remember things like the destruction that occurred here.  I’ll make up for the depressing stuff by talking about nudity and monkeys in my next post.  Promise.

The Japan Saga, Part I: Crisis at the Airport, and Kyoto

With a place as fabled as Japan, having been romanticized for years in American film and TV, always shrouded in the mystery of the orient’s  impenetrable cloak, it’s difficult not to fall into the trap of building up unrealistic expectations.  At the risk of sounding foolish, I’ll share with you the idealized image I had created in my mind of what my first night in Japan would consist of.  Since I knew I would have to kill several hours after my arrival waiting for my friend to get off work, I had pictured myself finding a charming little back alley tea house with paper partition walls and a low ceiling where I would sit on the floor and drink in the richness of an ancient culture, preferably while snow falls softly outside.  Silly, right?  Of course, I knew that realizing such a perfect picture would be unlikely, but I certainly didn’t imagine that I would spend my first 4 hours in Japan stuck in Nagoya-Chubu airport frantically making expensive international phone calls, running from one information stand to another, and generally in a state of utter panic – but that’s exactly what happened.

The very first thing I did when I passed through customs was to seek out an ATM.  I needed to book a train ticket to Toyohashi where my friend lives, and I also needed some cash to pay for my libations in the charming little tea house when I found it.  I came upon a 7-11 ATM – perfect, I thought.  I had read that these ATMs always accepted foreign cards (not all Japanese ATMs do).  When the machine rejected my card twice, I swallowed the sense of alarm that began to surge up from my stomach and moved on to a Citi-Bank ATM that was labeled “Global ATM.”  That one rejected my card too, as did every other ATM I tried (I now know that the card and account that I have with my Korean bank CANNOT be used abroad, even though I had gone to my bank earlier in the week to ask this very question and was told that it would work).  By then, there was no suppressing the dread that was quickly overtaking my brain.  What was I going to do?  I couldn’t use my American credit card to purchase a train ticket, because they can only be paid for with cash; and I had not had enough foresight to bring extra cash – I only had about 1300 yen worth, which wasn’t even enough to get me to Toyohashi.  Compounding my panic was the thought that, even if I did figure out a way to get to Toyohashi, I would still need to survive 10 days in Japan while I apparently didn’t have any access to money. 

My iphone can’t be used to make regular calls in Japan, but it didn’t take me long to realize that if I could find Wi-Fi, I could use Skype to call my American bank, which I did.  I wanted to know if I could use my American credit card to get a cash advance at an ATM.  Their answer was complicated and unhelpful.  I won’t bore you with the details;  I’ll just say the phone call got me nowhere.  I was still 300 yen short of the cost of a ticket to Toyohashi. 

Fortunately there was a young girl working for the rail company who had a good command of English, and she was my savior on this fateful night.  She showed me how to obtain a certain kind of ticket that would allow me to pay the fare upon my arrival in Toyohashi rather than beforehand.  So I took the ticket, ran back to the wireless hotspot, and used Skype to call my friend in Toyohashi.  Since he was working, it took me a few tries to get through to him, but I eventually did.  After I explained the whole situation, he agreed to meet me at the station in Toyohashi and cover the extra 300 yen I needed to be able to pay for the ticket.

And that, patient reader, is how my adventure in Japan began – with chaos and panic.  I ended up having to borrow money from my friend to pay for my expenses during the trip – to the tune of $700.  Now, THAT’S a good friend.  I don’t know what I would have done if I’d gone to Japan completely on my own with no one to bail me out.  I’d figure out later how to pay him back.  For the moment, the crisis had been averted.

The friend I was meeting up with in Toyohashi – Micah – is an old friend from my teenage years.  He and I used to hang out and play music together back when we were in high school.  I had seen him only once or twice in the last 7 years or so, but thanks to the magic of Facebook I knew that he was living and teaching in Japan.  It wasn’t long after my arrival in Korea that he and I began throwing around the idea of me visiting him there.  Traveling in Japan is expensive, but having a friend to crash with would significantly reduce costs;  plus, how often in life does one get to reunite with an old friend a world away from the place where we’d known each other before, in a country where he knows the language, the ins-and-outs of the transportation network, the meaning behind certain cultural customs and idiosyncrasies?  This needed to happen.  It would’ve been foolish not to take advantage of the opportunity.  If I was ever going to visit Japan, I would never again encounter such a perfect set of circumstances. 

My first proper Japanese sashimi:  Salmon, 

tuna, and salmon eggs.  Mmmm.

The day after my arrival was a Saturday.  Since Micah doesn’t have to work on weekends, he accompanied me to Kyoto – Japan’s ancient capital, a city renowned for being a bastion of “old Japan.”  To a greater extent than the other major Japanese cities, Kyoto has managed to retain a lot of the traditional flavor.  We arrived mid-afternoon, checked into our hostel, and set off under the assault of a steady rain to explore the city’s charms.  Micah knew this place well.  During his first trip to Japan in 2008, he’d stayed here for a month.  He took me to a tiny hole-in-the-wall eatery where we dined on some excellent sashimi.  We then proceeded to just wander around.  At one point, we veered into a narrow alley paved with flagstones that immediately brought to mind scenes from Memoirs of a Geisha.  And then, as if they were taking a cue from my thoughts, two genuine painted-up maikos (geisha in training) came waddling past us with their paper umbrellas and iconic get-ups.  The coolest thing about this chance encounter was that it was the real thing – these girls weren’t wearing a costume for the tourists; they were going to work. 

A side street in Kyoto

Later, we met up with some friends of Micah’s for dinner.  His friend Yui, her brother, and her awesome parents joined us at a curry house (one of Kyoto’s oldest) and for drinks at a nearby bar afterwards.  We whiled away several hours drinking and snacking on oysters and potato wedges.  Yui’s father is a Buddhist monk who’s skilled at playing the shakuhachi (traditional Japanese bamboo flute), and I had a very lively conversation with him about music, traveling, Japanese and American culture, and our respective personal histories.  I felt perfectly at home with these amazingly open, welcoming people.  This is the best way to travel – engaging and learning from the locals who have far more insight to share than any tourist guide book could possibly offer.  I began to relax and truly enjoy myself, the crisis of the previous night fading further into memory.

Micah and Yui on the left.  On the right, Yui's mother,brother, and father.

When we finally left the bar, the rain had abated.  Feeling too tipsy and tired to endure the long walk back to the hostel, Micah and I opted to take a taxi.  It wasn’t until we had stepped out on a dark street and the taxi had driven away that we realized that we weren’t at our hostel.  I heard Micah utter the dreaded words one hopes never to hear from a guide: “Hmm.  This doesn’t look right at all.”

We were in a residential neighborhood, a labyrinth of crooked, narrow streets and alleys.  We managed to find our way to a main road and a convenience store where we could ask directions – thank goodness Micah speaks Japanese.  Too bad the directions we received didn’t lead us to the hostel.  But we knew we were close.  After wandering around for about an hour and stopping numerous times in the glow of a streetlamp to scrutinize our map, we found ourselves in familiar territory.  It was with exhaustion and tremendous relief that we finally ascended the steps to our hostel, quietly celebrating our triumph over the maze of that Kyoto neighborhood.  I fished the key out of my pocket – a tag on the key ring displayed a numerical code that we needed to punch in to get the door to open:  #01090*.  It didn’t work.  I tried again.  It didn’t work the second time, and our premature celebration was immediately brought to a halt.

We looked at each other with incredulity.  Seriously?  After our unplanned hour-long moonlight stroll we wanted so badly to just be able to go to bed, and now there was another obstacle standing in our way.  We stood there in silence for a few moments, contemplating our next move.  Micah asked to see the key. 

Then, incredibly, he started to laugh.  Holding the key ring up for me to see, he slowly turned it upside down.  The code now read *06010#.  We knew before we even punched the numbers in that it would work, and that I was an idiot.

In the morning we checked out of the hostel and strolled down the now familiar neighborhood lanes to another hostel owned by the same folks as the one we’d just left.  We sat down for a breakfast of toast, coffee, and orange juice and hatched out our plan for the day.  We decided to head to the Fushimi Inari shrine in the south-eastern part of the city – really, it was a series of Shinto shrines spanning an entire mountainside which were connected by wandering paths that passed through colonnades of bright orange torii (a stylized Japanese gate usually found at the entrance of Shinto shrines which symbolically mark the transition from the profane to the sacred). 

A fountain for purifying one's hands

before entering the shrine

The first thing we did when we arrived at the main shrine – an impressive tiered pagoda structure of gleaming white and orange –  was to purify our hands by ladling water out of a fountain-trough.  The gateway to the shrine was guarded on either side by imposing fox statues.  The fox is believed to be the messenger of the Inari gods and is regarded as a highly spiritual animal capable of possessing humans (the preferred way of entering the body is under the fingernails).  We observed people walking up to a certain part of the shine and engaging in a prayer ritual in which they would toss in a coin, ring a bell (to get the gods’ attention, according to Micah), clap their hands twice, then bring their hands together in prayer.

The Fushimi Inari Shinto shrine

A statue of a fox -- messenger of the Inari

Before long, we continued up the mountain under the paradoxically luminescent shadow of the torii, investigating the smaller, cruder shrines along the way.  We eventually came to a point far up the hillside where we found tea houses overlooking the surrounding forests.  There were many junctions in the trail, and I had planned a specific route that would take us over the other side of the mountain, passed a Buddhist temple (Tofukuji), and deposit us near a train station.  Though my directions were carefully taken down from a guide book, following them explicitly proved to be impossible.  But by instead relying on instinctual sense of direction, we managed to find our way.

The bright orange torii of the Fushimi Inari Shrine

After lunch, we spent the rest of the day straining our already overworked leg muscles walking around the heart of Kyoto, picking up a few souvenirs.  By that evening we were back at Micah’s apartment in Toyohashi, unwinding with some tea and a card game with a few of Micah’s American friends.  All in all, it was a fun weekend and a very promising start to my trip.

So ends part 1 of the Japan saga.  Part 2 soon to come.

Tofukuji Buddhist Temple

One Semester Down

Unlike most schools in western countries, where December marks the half-way point of the school year, the end of the calendar year also means the end of the school year here in Korea.  And the end of the school year is an exciting time at Chungnam Foreign Language High School.  After enduring a solid year of masochistic study routines, the students are finally finished with exams and are permitted a little breathing room and a chance to cut loose.  At this school, final exams and grade calculations are completed a full two weeks before the break actually starts, leaving a lot of time at the end for bullshit.  This was a welcome reprieve for me, the teacher; I can only imagine how the students must’ve felt. 

Since the other teachers didn’t seem to be doing anything productive in their classes, I didn’t feel any guilt over showing Christmas movies for the entire week after finals.  We watched Elf, and it was a big hit.  I’ve never been much of a Will Ferrell fan, but his role in that particular movie easily transcends all language barriers.  To be honest, I really enjoyed being able to spend time with the students without the pressure of trying to teach them, trying to force participation, or giving them feedback on their pronunciation and grammar.  I adore my students – they are, after all, the reason I went into education in the first place – and my Korean students are sweethearts.  I treasured the opportunity to just hang out and build better relationships with them. 

There was another fun activity I cooked up for them at the end of the year, and it ended up being one of my most successful lessons to date.  I’m not sure they learned much, but they had fun and got a chance to practice their English.   That’s all that matters, right?

Like normal teenagers the world over, Korean teens love music.   They’ve known since I arrived that I play guitar and they’re always asking me to bring it in to play for them.  So I had the inspired idea to have each of my culture classes help me write a blues song.  To start things off, I gave them a brief history of the blues – how the genre developed historically, what makes a blues song a blues song, etc. – and I played a few YouTube videos of some of the greats, like John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, and Mississippi John Hurt.  I then taught them about the concept of “end rhyme” and had them come up with a few examples.  I also very briefly reviewed metaphors, similes, and imagery, explaining that these techniques are often employed in songwriting to make the lyrics more interesting and intuitive.  Finally, we decided on the subject matter of our class song.  I suggested that since blues songs often incorporate themes of “hard times” (poverty, lost love, hard work, addiction, death), that we could write a song about the “hard life” of the average Korean high school student.  They LOVED the idea – they don’t often get opportunities to vent their frustrations on this subject. 

I divided the class into pairs and had each set of partners come up with a rhyming couplet – just two lines per pair of students.  Here’s a few examples of what they came up with:

“My head’s going to blow from the insanity

of always worrying about university.”

“Can’t you see me living life without fun?

Can’t remember when I last saw the sun.”

“I don’t want to study, but I don’t have a choice.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a voice.”

“We always study for 14 hours

But there’s no guarantee that success will be ours”

“I’m so sick of this school,

But at least teacher Kevin is cool”    **(Those kids should’ve gotten extra credit)

Once all the students had contributed some lyrics to the project, I took them home, fitted them together, and reworked them slightly so they would fit with the music (I used the tune for Pride and Joy because it’s simple and flexible).  On the last week of classes I went in to each class with copies of the lyrics, passed them out, and performed the song for them.  I think they really enjoyed it. 

The hosts of the Golden Bell game show make their entrance 

onto the set.

The very last week before the break was a whirlwind of activity.  The students were really excited about the fact that Golden Bell – a nationally broadcast Korean quiz show for students – was filming an episode at our school with select students as the contestants.  The elaborate set was erected in the auditorium of a nearby university, and the entire staff and student body were present for the game.  Filming dragged on all day, and the whole thing was obviously conducted in Korean, so it got a bit boring for me at times, since I wasn’t able to understand what was going on.  But it was still exciting overall.  Several student groups got to perform traditional music for the show’s opening, and later in the program there were more performances by the dance club and the cheerleading squad.  It was a great reminder for me that there’s a lot more to these students than relentless studying, and I was very impressed with their talents. 

A student playing a gayageum, a traditional
harp-like instrument.

Oh, did I mention that I got to participate as well?  One of the questions for the game was an English conversation question, and it’s customary for an English speaking staff member to read the question.  So I was paired with a third year student who has excellent pronunciation, and together we read a short scripted conversation.  The question was about budae jjigae, a spicy soup that has its origins in the time immediately following the Korean War when, due to a food shortage, Koreans began utilizing surplus foods from US Army bases (read: hot dogs and Spam) and incorporating them into a soup with more traditional ingredients like kimchi and gochujang (red chili paste).  We really do export the best of our culture to other countries, don’t we? :-P  Budae jjigae (literally, “army base stew”) is still popular today. So anyway, I’ve had my one minute of fame – or I will on February 5^th when the show airs. 

"Teacher, I'm hungry.  Do you have anything to eat?"

The show actually had a rather sensational conclusion.  It came down to two students who battled it out with each other round after round after round.  It’s rare for contestants to get beyond 30 or so questions, but these guys fought each other all the way up to the final 50^th question.  Our principal was thrilled, because it made the school look really good.  Winning the game is a big deal – the winner gets a scholarship and a trip to America, or something like that.  Unfortunately, in the end there could only be one winner, but the runner up got a pretty stellar consolation prize – a trip to Europe. 

The final two contestants battling for first place.

Students playing Jenga at the 'cafe' 

during the school festival.

The final day of the semester was the day of the school festival.  Since Korean students don’t have the traditions of a homecoming dance or prom, the school festival is what they look forward to all semester.  I had been looking forward to it as well.  The day started off with students setting up “stations” all over the school – there was face painting, organized games, a mock casino, puzzles and trivia, and an imitation café.  They had a lot of fun with it.  I spent the morning bouncing around from station to station, ending up in the café playing cards and Jenga with a group of students while other students served us drinks, chips, and choco pies.  There were even a few student guitarists who served up some live coffeeshop-style entertainment for the rest of us. 

Two students perform a pop duet for a captive 

audience at the school festival.

After lunch, the students piled into the auditorium for the main event – student performances on the big stage.  The acts ranged from singing pop songs and choreographed dances to performances of classical guitar or the traditional gayageum.  Again, I was amazed by the depth of talent the students possess.  These performances went on for the rest of the day and into the night.  The students never tired of it, and considering how hard they worked during the rest of the semester, I think they deserved all the fun and recreation they could handle. 

So now the school year is over and I can officially say that I survived my first semester in a Korean high school.  No sweat.  Over the break, I’m still required to come in to school every day even though there are no classes for me to teach.  This pointless practice is called “desk warming.”  The Korean teachers don’t have to be here, but my contract is different.  So basically, I sit in my office and waste away hour after hour on facebook, searching for the end of the Internet, studying Korean (I am now a boss at reading Hangeul), reading, napping, playing games, watching movies...and getting paid for it.  I’m also doing some lesson planning for next semester, but it’s hard to stay motivated with this much time on my hands.  Anyways, I’ll soon be busting out for 10 days to visit an old friend in Japan.  I leave next week and couldn’t be more excited.  Kyoto, Tokyo, and Hiroshima are on the agenda, and hopefully a few other places, time permitting.  So my next blog post will likely be about my adventures in the land of the rising sun.  Until then, take care all!

Me posing with the two most promising members of my lunch-time guitar club on their last day of Grade 1

So This is Christmas?

I’ve been slacking. When I started this blog, I had intended to update it on a consistent basis, but I’ve now let more than a month pass without posting anything here.  I wish I could say my neglect was due to my being too busy adventuring and doing outrageously exciting things to spend time writing.  But the truth is I had a very low-key, uneventful December.  In an effort to save money for an upcoming trip to Japan, I’ve been going out less on the weekends and spending more time at home.  As a result, I just haven’t had much to write about.  Toward the end of December, however, the holidays and end-of-the-school-year activities did provide some stories that are worth telling.

A lot of folks back home have been asking whether or not Koreans celebrate Christmas.  The short, not-so-simple answer is: sort of. I mean, department stores decorate and coffee shops play Christmas music (usually remixed with electronic dance beats).  But people don’t travel to visit family, stores stay open, and hardly anyone gets extra time off work or school.  It’s like they adopt the seasonal themes superficially but don’t really practice the traditions.

Still, I got many wishes of “Merry Christmas” from my students and co-workers who recognize how important this holiday is to westerners.  On the Friday before Christmas weekend, a student gave me a strawberry cupcake as a Christmas present.  It was one of only two presents that I received this year, and it totally made my day.

Luckily, I have plenty of foreign friends here who wanted to do something special to celebrate.  And after a month of not doing much socially, I really needed to get out.

A white Christmas in Korea!

I awoke on the morning of December 24^th to bright blue skies and a fresh layer of snow on the ground.  Perfect – a white Christmas.  It was a good start.  The weather had been rather cold and dreary in the preceding weeks, so the delightful wintery scene from my balcony of snow-covered hills combined with the pungent, comforting aroma of wood smoke was very welcome indeed.  Despite the cold, I bundled up and sat on my balcony for a while, contentedly sipping a steaming cup of freshly-brewed java and enjoying the clear morning. 

The girls -- Asanda, Kira, Lauren,
 and Jenji -- with our lovely Christmas cake

Later that day, I met some friends at Cheonan Station and boarded a train bound for Seoul.  Another friend was apartment-sitting in the capital and had invited us to spend Christmas there – a prospect far more enticing than remaining in our usual stomping grounds.  After we arrived, we decided to go out for dinner.  Then, we stopped by a supermarket and bought a cake and some wine.  I also decided to splurge on a bottle of bourbon and justified the expense by saying that it was a Christmas present to myself.  It’s the little things that make the holidays special.

N Seoul Tower

We made a brief stop back at the apartment, ate the cake (after singing happy birthday to Jesus), had a quick drink, then went out again.  In an effort to do something more momentous and memorable, we resolved to go to Namsung Tower (also called N Seoul Tower), which sits atop a prominent hill in the heart of Seoul.  It’s a 777 ft. tall communication and observation structure – think of it as a Korean version of the Seattle Space Needle.  Equally touristy too.  We were able to take a cable car up to the top of Namsung Hill – a slightly uncomfortable, but mercifully quick ride.  I’m sure it sounds like a rather romantic notion to be sailing over the lights of Seoul in a cable car, but true to Koreans’ customary disregard for the concept of “personal space,” they had so many of us crammed into the car that you couldn’t have fit another person in with a shoe horn.  Stuck somewhere in the middle of the pack, I didn’t have much of a view outside.

Once at the top of the hill, we circled the base of the tower to check everything out.  There was a whole pavilion up there with souvenir shops, restaurants, and even a teddy bear museum.  The only thing of real interest, if only for its humorous quirkiness, was a viewing platform on which all the rails were adorned with “love padlocks.”  This is a custom by which sweethearts come together and affix a padlock on the railing and throw away the key, thereby creating a symbol of their everlasting love for each other.  A quick google search has shown me that this custom did not originate in Korea, but its cheesy cutesiness seems perfectly suited for this country and its sappy take on romantic relationships.

Love Padlocks at the pavilion atop Namsung Hill

The real attraction up here was the tower itself and the panoramic views from the top.  A 9000₩ elevator ride, complete with an intense 3D animation on the ceiling that simulated blasting off in a rocket, took us to the observation deck at the top of the tower.  The observation deck was completely enclosed, which kept everyone warm, but was nonetheless a little disappointing for me, since it’s difficult to take good photos through dirty glass.  Still, the view is easily the best and most prominent in the city.  Due to the tower’s central location, one is able to see the bright lights of the world’s second largest metropolis spreading out as far as the eye can see in all directions – no other view goes so far in helping one to appreciate the immensity of this city.  Another neat feature was that the names of the great cities of the world were printed near the tops of the glass window panes, with an indication of in which direction they lay and how far distant they are.  It turns out that my beloved Seattle is 8,331.88 km away.  (I returned to N Seoul Tower a couple weeks later, this time during daylight, with hopes of snapping some good photos – but alas, the forecasted clear skies didn’t materialize, resulting in less-than-ideal photographing conditions.  Still, a sample photo can be seen below this post)

A view of Seoul from N Seoul Tower on Christmas Eve

The remainder of our Christmas Eve was spent back at the apartment cozily watching Christmas movies and drinking in holiday cheer (with a splash of alcohol).  The following day was more of the same.  Two of my friends graciously prepared us a very delicious albeit non-traditional Christmas feast and we all eventually returned to Cheonan that evening very satisfied with how we’d spent the holiday weekend.  Ultimately, my Christmas ended up bearing many similarities to my Thanksgiving this year– characterized by westerners coming together and, in the absence of family and the comforts of home, consciously trying to recreate something of the ambiance and tradition we’re used to.  It's like we know the recipe by heart, so we do what we can despite lacking a few ingredients.  Like Thanksgiving, my Christmas in Korea was not quite typical, but still familiar enough to keep loneliness and homesickness at bay.

I’m a couple weeks late getting this posted, but I’d still like to wish you all happy holidays and the best of luck in the new year.  Here’s to a 2012 filled with even more adventure, fun, and self-discovery!  If the Mayans were right, this could be our last chance to make the best of things, so make sure you take advantage of what precious little time you have left! (That was a joke.  But seriously though, Carpe Diem!)

A daytime view of Seoul from the top of N Seoul Tower

Gratitude

If you read my very first entry for this blog back in September, you may remember that I said that, in coming to Korea, I hoped to experience things so completely foreign that they “would turn my worldview on its head.” To be honest, looking back on that statement, I’m not even sure what it was supposed to mean, or what my expectations truly were.  Was I expecting to be consistently shocked, fascinated, or appalled by the unfamiliarity of things?  Was I expecting a mythical land of shrouded mystery and dragon-filled folklore?  Exotic adventure?  Enlightenment?  I’m not entirely certain.  At the very least, I think I was expecting something unexpected – cliché, I know, but I don’t know how else to say it.  I think I had some pretty hazy notions of what Korea would be like before I got here – a fusion of the ultramodern and the exotically traditional.  Generally speaking, that perception is pretty close to reality.  But what I hadn’t anticipated was how quickly the novelty of it would wear off, how quickly I would adapt and begin to perceive the things around me as ordinary.  The unfamiliar has become familiar.  I’m reminded of an episode of Father Ted, an Irish sit-com from the 90s.  Ted and Dougal are on vacation, standing at a tourist site called St. Kevin’s Stump, looking very bored and unimpressed with the anticlimactic experience.  Dougal asks, “Are all holidays like this, Ted?”  Ted forlornly replies, “Actually…yeah.”

 Now I’m just living my day-to-day life more or less the way I would back home – I go to work, I come home, I make dinner (granted, what I eat and drink may be a little different, but not always), I play guitar, I might get together with friends to watch a movie or have a drink.  Is this really why I travelled all this way?  It feels like I should be doing more, like maybe if I took more initiative I could make my experience more meaningful.  But I’m not sure how to go about it.  I guess, in the end, the adventure of merely “traveling abroad” yields different results than the inevitable monotony of “living and working abroad.”

Every once in a while, however, Korea completely surprises me and presents me with an experience that instantly reminds me that I am, in fact, in a foreign country.  Take last week for instance.  A new wing of our school, which had been under construction since before my arrival, was finally completed and ready for a grand opening.  So during seventh period, my co-teacher Mr. Jung told me and two other native English teachers to come with him to the conference room downstairs.  All he said was, “Formal ceremony.  We go downstairs, eat tteok.”  (Tteok is a sort of chewy cake made from rice, and I’d had a light lunch, so I was instantly on board).  We followed him downstairs, totally unprepared for what we were about to walk in on.

When we arrived at the conference room, the ceremony was already under way.  It took me a few moments to completely take in what I was seeing, for at first I was sure my eyes were playing tricks on me.  I saw a bunch of people standing around, silently looking in the direction of a low table, lavishly set and laden with candles, bowls of fruit and dried fish, and, surprisingly….a severed pig’s head.

“Is that what I think it is?” mumbled Wiley, my co-teacher from Indiana.  I’m sure he took my stunned silence as an affirmation.

Before the table, spread out on the ground, was a mat.  One by one, the school’s top administrators and several teachers approached the table, bowed to the pig’s head, then kneeled on the mat.  They then took a bowl of rice wine (I think) and carefully spilled a little on the ground to each side of the table.  Next, they began prostrating themselves on the ground like Muslims at prayer time.  Once….twice…three times, each person brought his or her forehead to the floor before this strange display.  In the final stage they would rise, take money out of their pockets, and stuff it into every available orifice in the pig’s face.  I was at a loss for words.

I soon learned that this ceremony is called Gosa, and it’s a ritual for giving thanks and requesting blessings, safety, good fortune, and prosperity.  It’s a shamanistic tradition that is usually done at the outset of something – the opening of a new business, for example, or even moving into a new apartment.  In this case, the ceremony was expressing gratitude for the safe, successful completion of the school’s new wing, and it was also a wish for the continued prosperity of the school.  It is my understanding that this ritual is observed more as a folk tradition than a strictly held belief, more superstition than devotion.  Personally, I had not yet witnessed anything of this nature in Korea.  The sight of respected professionals in nice suits prostrating themselves before a grotesque pig’s head seemed oddly incongruous, but upon reflection, I’m not sure why I was so surprised.  Hadn’t this been exactly the kind of “completely foreign” thing I had expected to encounter here?

After the ceremony, we took a brief tour of the new facilities.  We then returned to the conference room to find the tables laid out with plates of tteok, fruit, bottles of makgeolli (rice wine), and thin, bite-sized pieces of unidentifiable grayish-pink meat.

I nudged Wiley, indicating the plate of mystery meat.  “What is that?”

His response was another question, “Uhh…what happened to that pig’s head that was in here before?”

Yep, you guessed it.  The unidentifiable meat was indeed the cut-up remnants of the pig’s head – I think it was mostly the ears we were eating. I watched the principal pick up a piece with chopsticks, dab it in some salt, and pop it in his mouth.  He then smiled at me and gestured toward the plate.  My turn.  I didn’t let my reluctance show, even though the sight of the stuff, frankly, grossed me out.  I wasn’t sure if it was even cooked or not because of the color (turns out, it was steamed).  I made sure I rolled it around generously in the salt before placing it in my mouth.  First impression:  cold and clammy, the flavor initially overwhelmed by the salt.  Then I began to chew.  It was simultaneously chewy (because of the fat) and crunchy (because of the cartilage).  When the flavor came through, it was pretty bland and porky, but not unbearable.  The texture was the real killer.  The worst part was that it required quite a bit of chewing before I could swallow it.  I got it down as fast as I could, before the gag reflex had a chance to kick in.  The best part of all this was watching the look on Wiley’s face when his turn came.  I hope I was better at masking my displeasure than him.

Despite the unpleasant snack, I was really happy that I was present for this ceremony.  Once I moved beyond my initial shock, I did find the whole thing extremely fascinating.  It was a great example of that whole “modernity meets tradition” aspect of Korea that I mentioned a few paragraphs back.  It was also my first encounter with shamanism.  Plus, being a part of the ceremony with the other teachers made me feel more like a part of the staff rather than an outsider.  And that was nice.


Anyway, on to other things.  Tis the season to be thankful.  Or so they say. I tend to think of myself as a fairly reflective person, but if I’m being honest, I have to admit I usually allow Thanksgiving to come and go without giving much thought to anything other than food and football.  This year was different though.  Every Thanksgiving of my life has been spent with family and close friends, and there’s nothing like spending the holiday thousands of miles away from home to put it all in perspective.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t miserably homesick there for a few days, missing my family, craving pumpkin pie, getting all nostalgic looking at the photos posted on facebook of my Washington friends enjoying their feast.  But, honestly, I still managed to have a great Thanksgiving.  The weekend prior to the actual holiday I met up with a bunch of friends (other foreign teachers I’d met at orientation) at Nate’s place in Yesan.  A majority of those present were Americans, but there were also some Brits, Kiwis, and Aussies -- some them enjoying their very first Thanksgiving with us.  Our feast lacked some of the Thanksgiving staples (like pumpkin pie, sadly), but we still had stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes (with cheese and bacon because, hey…it’s the American way).  And I showed up with a hefty supply of sweet potato casserole, my mom’s recipe, which I’ve managed to make myself at every single Thanksgiving that I’ve celebrated away from my family.  The whole affair was like a little slice of home.  It was comforting and awesome.  Margeaux, who’s from New Zealand, even brought a homemade pavlova – a delicious NZ dessert which I hadn’t been able to enjoy since I was there in 2006.  It was like icing on the cake (pun intended, I guess).

Pavlova!

My somewhat traditional, yet still
pretty foreign, Thanksgiving dinner.

My birthday dinner with friends at
Mt. Fishtail Indian Restaurant in Cheonan

So this year, I’m acknowledging that I have a lot to be thankful for.  I’m thankful for having a loving extended family, who is always so supportive of me, even when I’m hatching crazy plans to leave them behind to chase adventure in far-away destinations.  I’m thankful for the wonderful, loyal friends that I have scattered all over the globe, some of whom I’ve not seen for many years but nevertheless feel a strong kinship with still.  I’m thankful for the awesome people that I’ve met here in Korea – many of whom traveled on trains and buses to come to Cheonan and take me out for dinner and drinks on my birthday a few weeks ago.  I’m thankful that I finally have that full-time teaching job I’ve been trying for years to procure.  I’m thankful that I’m here in Korea, living out my desire to travel and my dream to teach in a foreign country, especially because there were so many circumstances that nearly prevented this experience from happening.



It occurs to me that the Gosa ceremony, which I initially found so bizarre, is not actually all that different from our American Thanksgiving.  Swap the steamed pig head stuffed with money for a roasted turkey stuffed with stuffing, and the spirit or sentiment is pretty much the same.  So, I am especially thankful for this moment of clarity, for I think there is wisdom in the realization that, no matter where I go or who I meet, certain things seem to be universal:  friendship, love, gratitude, hope.

I’m also grateful for this opportunity for self-examination, to reassess why I’m here and what I hope to gain through this experience.  And I’m thankful that I have plenty of time left to figure it all out.  I’m sure there’s a lesson somewhere in this lull I’m experiencing at the moment.  I’ll continue to search for the deeper meaning to my journey here in Asia, and I’m confident that I will find it eventually.  Clearly, I’ve got some work to do.