Yesterday was such a crazy-packed day, filled with so many things that I’m just going to have to tell you about all of them in a straightforward, chronological manner. I’ve been trying to avoid “here’s what happened to me lately” posts on this blog (not that those are bad, I’m just trying to do things that are different), but I’ve been thinking for about an hour about how to get started on this post, and at this point, I just have to admit that too much happened yesterday for me to filter it down to one or two meaningful incidents.
So here goes!
I woke up early, feeling very rested. I’m sleeping more or less on the floor, with a futon that’s about an inch thick as all that stands between me and the hard wood. And I haven’t slept more comfortably in months. Either it’s some kind of miracle of futon technology that only the Japanese can explain, or else my mattress in Korea is just that hard. In any case, I’m sleeping great here. I love it.
Denton, Joseph and I slowly scrambled to get ready. Breakfast was donuts. Everyone had a shower. Denton scrutinized his subway map between glances out the window, gauging the weather for signs of sunshine. We had a big day ahead of us. It was important to have a plan. Finally, at about 11:30 we were ready to go. Denton had it all figured out. We would go to Ueno first, because the sights around there would be better in the day, while it was sunny.
On to the subway! Ads for a production of the Lion King. Ads for pop super-groups with 48 members, all scantily-clad young women. A statue of a big purple cow hanging down over a balcony in an apartment complex right along the subway line. Why the hell not??
We arrived at Ueno and headed for Ueno park. It features one of the most famous spots in Japan to watch the cherry blossoms blooming. During the summer, streets turn pink with cherry blossoms blooming, and Japanese people turn out in the millions to look at them. One wide and picturesque avenue in Ueno park is so renowned for its beautiful blossoms that it has become common practice for the lowest level employee at a company to be tasked to arrive there at the crack of dawn to reserve a spot for everyone. The other employees will show up later, and everyone will drink sake and watch the blossoms for hours.
The park isn’t quite the same in the winter, according to Denton, but I thought it was wonderful. It still looked beautiful and there were so many interesting things there besides just the natural beauty. There was a Shinto shrine, and Denton taught me how to wash my hands in the traditional way. There is a basin of water with ladles over it. You fill one ladle and wash one hand. Fill it again and wash the other. Then you get a little more water, and drink it out of your hands. After you’re finished you are purified, and ready to enter the shrine. Really cool.
There are also a lot of museums in the area. We didn’t go into any of them, but some pretty great stuff was outside. Like the life-sized statue of a blue whale. It seemed like you could spend all day in this area for several days. But, the sun sets early here, and it was getting late, so we had to get going to Asokusa to see the enormous Buddhist temple there while it was still light.
On the way back to the train station, Denton remembered a place that was so distinctly Japanese, so oddly memorable that we just couldn’t miss out on it. It was a toy store.
Now, toy stores are usually for children. For the most part, if an adult can get anything out a trip to a toy store, it’s a simple bit of nostalgia, or the novelty of seeing what the kids are into these days. In Japan, though, things are a little different. The nation that spawned Hello Kitty has commoditized childhood in the strangest way possible, making for some truly bizarre merchandise. We were at a toy store, but if anything, we were closer to being too young for it.
The best example might have been the Pussy Monster action figures. Or maybe it was the “gloomy bear” mouse pad (he’s sad because he’s bleeding from his head). Or maybe it was all perfectly summed up by the Jack Skellington glasses stand. It’s the head of Jack Skellington, from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and you put it on your bedside table, and place your glasses on his face, so he wears them while staring at you as you sleep. And you know what? I really wanted to buy it.
We’d explore each floor for 5 or 10 minutes and then move up. There were about 5 floors in all. The oddest moment was when we got to the floor that was actually for children. It didn’t feature bizarre merchandise like those just described. It had race car tracks, and stuffed animals (NORMAL stuffed animals) and a few other things that you might actually buy for a kid. Needless to say, this floor was pretty boring for 3 people in their 20s and we soon converged by the staircase, having seen enough. Reuniting with Denton, he looked at me and said “Kids’ floor.” Yup.
After that, we had a trip to Asokusa planned to see one of the largest wooden structures in the world, an enormous Buddhist temple. Naturally, nothing puts you in the mood for a temple like an insane toy store. This seems to be a theme for Japan. Next to the temple was an amusement park. You’d be checking out some statue and then you hear “Wheeeeeeeee!” from somebody a few hundred yards away. I wish I had more to say about the temple itself, but most of it was closed for renovation.
A bummer, but this is the off-season, and it’s got to be done.
Oh! I almost forgot. One of the best things happened just after we got off the subway in Asokusa. We happened upon some rickshaw drivers, and one of them spoke a little bit of English. He asked me “Why don’t you support rickshaw?” And I had no idea what to say to that. Why don’t I support rickshaw?
Anyhoo, we met with one of Denton’s friends and co-workers in JET, Marisa, and we all headed to Akihabara. Akihabara is sort of the nerd capital of the world. There are tons of shops full of video games and other electronics. The place is a zoo. Roaming the streets and young Japanese women dressed in maid outfits promoting their shops. Some of the maids have wings. Yeah, sure, a winged maid. Why the hell not??
I bought something in Akihabara. It’s a wind-up alpaca. Wind up that furry little fella and he will kick his little hooves as bravely as he can, running in little circles around your table. Only a thousand yen for such a delight. Who could say no?
Finally, we headed back to Satte. Just across the street from Denton’s apartment there is a restaurant run by a couple of Nepalese guys and it is just superlative. I got the vegetable curry with bhatura naan and some kind of thick mango drink. God, I love Indian food. I could eat it every day for the rest of my life. It’s the food of the gods. After 7 hours out in Japan walking around and seeing the sights, we were starving, and nothing could have been more replenishing. I hope we eat there again.
Alrighty! So there it is! That’s one day in Japan. I’m lucky to have such a knowledgeable travel guide. There’s so much to do here and so little time.
Until next time, be sure to wash behind your ears.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
the grove
Ten thousand one hundred and fifty five toying with symmetry and robbing us blind taking bank notes and scribbling amounts on the blank notes, buying up the stones
Three hundred of them came back and looked for more finding a place deserted with old newspapers and ugly signs cracked and falling exposed wires all the doors open wind blowing across open streets crowded with obstacles
They found the place a right home and they cleared the sidewalks and the intersections and blasted holes in walls to create new paths and threw bathtubs over balconies and and flooded all the underground places. Theirs was a new school of urban planning and they built neither out nor up but carefully placed destruction in all the right places until the empty city was teeming with life. Fish stocked the basements, swimming up old stairwells and making jumps into the street like eggs hopping into frying pans, while Ivy covered the walls where they found the new paths appealing, exploring the blasted terrain and bringing meaning to its imperfection.
This place was like a grown over zoo where old cage bars became savagely green propping up oaks and allowing the ivy to get close to the sun. Raw green foliage ruled over the quiet and even the animals were hiding, no longer half as visible as they had been, when the zoo was operating and meeting its daily, weekly, yearly objectives, pressures unwittingly placed on ignorant actors who already couldn’t handle the stress. You can’t blame them. They all had stage fright.
Here, a tiger slinks through an old hallway. The way she moves is not confident or cocksure, but it is determined. To prowl is to live, like a shark keeping swimming to keep its gills sated, when her shoulders are hunched and she moves along quickly in silence, she’s a fish in a stream, where she belongs, and finally, finally breathing. She spent breathless years sheated in ugly bars. She retreats from sight.
Our humble 300 have retreated to the village grove, where 900 trees that nobody planted sprouted through the asphalt and grew taller than ladders in less than a year. The trees have grown pregnant with flowers and figs, hard copper wires sticking out between their branches like tinsel, loose twigs of bark and metal falling 25 feet to the hard, cracked ground, where they can land with a snap or they can land with a kling, depending on which way they happened to fall.
The people must now stay in the grove most of the time. The world they helped create has now grown too wild. They showed it a path and it crowded them out with guaranteed danger, and even now, they are still too human to be able to live in guaranteed danger. Yet every day, at the height of midday, when it is too bright to feel scared, they’ll leave the figs, explore the city, and continue their work. Their grove is a heart, and it lies at the center of a body long deprived of oxygen. Everyday, the midday sun is a single beat of the long dormant heart, sending 300 blood cells deeper and deeper down dormant blood vessels, awakening old flesh, ennervating it, pressing it gently and making it move. Blasting holes in walls. Removing doors from hinges. Listening quietly until they hear the changes that they are supposed to make.
They stay late, late, until it looks like it will be dark by the time they make it back to their place of rest, and then they rush as quickly as they can, without making noise, speeding along the clearest avenues left, those well-trod veins with cleared intersections. They race the dusk, and they know if they are too slow, there may be monsters lurking. But, if it grows dark, when they near the grove, the fire will already be lit by those who stayed behind, the eternal flame, lit by an old shard of magnifying glass held over dry leaves until they smoke over and finally burst into self-sustaining heat.
Three hundred of them came back and looked for more finding a place deserted with old newspapers and ugly signs cracked and falling exposed wires all the doors open wind blowing across open streets crowded with obstacles
They found the place a right home and they cleared the sidewalks and the intersections and blasted holes in walls to create new paths and threw bathtubs over balconies and and flooded all the underground places. Theirs was a new school of urban planning and they built neither out nor up but carefully placed destruction in all the right places until the empty city was teeming with life. Fish stocked the basements, swimming up old stairwells and making jumps into the street like eggs hopping into frying pans, while Ivy covered the walls where they found the new paths appealing, exploring the blasted terrain and bringing meaning to its imperfection.
This place was like a grown over zoo where old cage bars became savagely green propping up oaks and allowing the ivy to get close to the sun. Raw green foliage ruled over the quiet and even the animals were hiding, no longer half as visible as they had been, when the zoo was operating and meeting its daily, weekly, yearly objectives, pressures unwittingly placed on ignorant actors who already couldn’t handle the stress. You can’t blame them. They all had stage fright.
Here, a tiger slinks through an old hallway. The way she moves is not confident or cocksure, but it is determined. To prowl is to live, like a shark keeping swimming to keep its gills sated, when her shoulders are hunched and she moves along quickly in silence, she’s a fish in a stream, where she belongs, and finally, finally breathing. She spent breathless years sheated in ugly bars. She retreats from sight.
Our humble 300 have retreated to the village grove, where 900 trees that nobody planted sprouted through the asphalt and grew taller than ladders in less than a year. The trees have grown pregnant with flowers and figs, hard copper wires sticking out between their branches like tinsel, loose twigs of bark and metal falling 25 feet to the hard, cracked ground, where they can land with a snap or they can land with a kling, depending on which way they happened to fall.
The people must now stay in the grove most of the time. The world they helped create has now grown too wild. They showed it a path and it crowded them out with guaranteed danger, and even now, they are still too human to be able to live in guaranteed danger. Yet every day, at the height of midday, when it is too bright to feel scared, they’ll leave the figs, explore the city, and continue their work. Their grove is a heart, and it lies at the center of a body long deprived of oxygen. Everyday, the midday sun is a single beat of the long dormant heart, sending 300 blood cells deeper and deeper down dormant blood vessels, awakening old flesh, ennervating it, pressing it gently and making it move. Blasting holes in walls. Removing doors from hinges. Listening quietly until they hear the changes that they are supposed to make.
They stay late, late, until it looks like it will be dark by the time they make it back to their place of rest, and then they rush as quickly as they can, without making noise, speeding along the clearest avenues left, those well-trod veins with cleared intersections. They race the dusk, and they know if they are too slow, there may be monsters lurking. But, if it grows dark, when they near the grove, the fire will already be lit by those who stayed behind, the eternal flame, lit by an old shard of magnifying glass held over dry leaves until they smoke over and finally burst into self-sustaining heat.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
60
Tick Tock, said the clock to the Siamese cat. Meow Meow, said the cat, looking right back.
Today was my two month anniversary! My contract is for 16 months, from October 2009 to February 2011. That means I am already 1/8th of the way through. Wow! Looked at like that, it’s really going to fly by. See? Even in Korea I can go through an eigth quickly. Ba dum chish.
But seriously folks, time is a funny thing here. It expands and contracts unpredictably. I can’t get a handle on whether life is flying past like a cow in a tornado, or if it’s sluggishly pumping by, more like if the cow was in a tar pit, or a large container of maple syrup. Maybe sometimes the cow drinks some of the maple syrup. Maybe other times the cow stops to have a smoke, and accidentally lights all the tar on fire. Oh, Bessie, you are a messie.
Maybe I’ve become detached from a normal sense of time because my last three months in America were so routine. I was living at home with Mom and Dad, job free and almost alone in town. I filled the days decently well, but in a very predictable way. Exercise, books, movies, correspondence with friends. These months passed quickly. Each day bled into the next and the passage of individual days was irrevelant. On the last day, I got a haircut. Haircuts are such a great marker of time. I want to start keeping all my hair in clear glass jars, put up shelves in a room in my house, and fill those shelves completely up with jars of hair. When it’s a big enough collection that it becomes striking, so that when you walk into that room you say “wow, that’s a lot of hair”, I want to make it an exhibit in an art show and it will be called “I Have Been Alive This Long”. You know what I think would be really funny? If I wore a blonde wig to the opening.
So anyway, as I haven’t gotten that haircut yet, I am less than one jar into my time here. Stated that way, it’s like I just arrived. I haven’t even needed a haircut yet! You know who else hasn’t needed any haircuts? Babies.
So you see, I’ve become unmoored. I can’t tell if things are going quickly or slowly. I’m in flux. And I know why. I know how it works now. The trick to losing track is to increase novelty in your life. The novel hits your psyche and leaves a firm impression. It’s like throwing a heavy stone through a smooth surface of water. It’s a thudding plop and it makes big ripples. You can see it and feel it long after the source is gone. Where the routine passes through almost unnoticed, new experiences hit with a thud, then linger.
It feels good. It feels right. I feel like people aren’t meant to live their lives believing that the passage of time is something to be tracked. It feels better if it’s impossible to track it. I like the fact that, if I threw away all the calendars in my life, and never looked at dates, I’d soon be completely lost, with only the weather as my guide.
Meow Meow said the clock to the cat on the floor. The cat said nothing. He just walked out the door.
Today was my two month anniversary! My contract is for 16 months, from October 2009 to February 2011. That means I am already 1/8th of the way through. Wow! Looked at like that, it’s really going to fly by. See? Even in Korea I can go through an eigth quickly. Ba dum chish.
But seriously folks, time is a funny thing here. It expands and contracts unpredictably. I can’t get a handle on whether life is flying past like a cow in a tornado, or if it’s sluggishly pumping by, more like if the cow was in a tar pit, or a large container of maple syrup. Maybe sometimes the cow drinks some of the maple syrup. Maybe other times the cow stops to have a smoke, and accidentally lights all the tar on fire. Oh, Bessie, you are a messie.
Maybe I’ve become detached from a normal sense of time because my last three months in America were so routine. I was living at home with Mom and Dad, job free and almost alone in town. I filled the days decently well, but in a very predictable way. Exercise, books, movies, correspondence with friends. These months passed quickly. Each day bled into the next and the passage of individual days was irrevelant. On the last day, I got a haircut. Haircuts are such a great marker of time. I want to start keeping all my hair in clear glass jars, put up shelves in a room in my house, and fill those shelves completely up with jars of hair. When it’s a big enough collection that it becomes striking, so that when you walk into that room you say “wow, that’s a lot of hair”, I want to make it an exhibit in an art show and it will be called “I Have Been Alive This Long”. You know what I think would be really funny? If I wore a blonde wig to the opening.
So anyway, as I haven’t gotten that haircut yet, I am less than one jar into my time here. Stated that way, it’s like I just arrived. I haven’t even needed a haircut yet! You know who else hasn’t needed any haircuts? Babies.
So you see, I’ve become unmoored. I can’t tell if things are going quickly or slowly. I’m in flux. And I know why. I know how it works now. The trick to losing track is to increase novelty in your life. The novel hits your psyche and leaves a firm impression. It’s like throwing a heavy stone through a smooth surface of water. It’s a thudding plop and it makes big ripples. You can see it and feel it long after the source is gone. Where the routine passes through almost unnoticed, new experiences hit with a thud, then linger.
It feels good. It feels right. I feel like people aren’t meant to live their lives believing that the passage of time is something to be tracked. It feels better if it’s impossible to track it. I like the fact that, if I threw away all the calendars in my life, and never looked at dates, I’d soon be completely lost, with only the weather as my guide.
Meow Meow said the clock to the cat on the floor. The cat said nothing. He just walked out the door.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Snow!
Yesterday it snowed, and it was magical.
Almost two months have flown off the calendar and Christmas is almost here. Stony faced Koreans representing the Salvation Army are relentlessly ringing bells in subway stations. We had a secret Santa drawing at work, which we had to do multiple times because of little hitches with the drawing. I drew the same person three times, so I’m not worried about what to get her. If it’s fate, how can I go wrong? People everywhere are talking about their travel plans for Christmas break. Jason and Jordan are going to the Phillipines. Mark and Emma are going back to the UK. I’ll be hollying and jollying and ringing in the new year in Japan. It’s time to get some presents. And fortunately for me, I live in a nation of infinite malls.
I got up on Saturday and got ready to go out shopping. It was gray day, but it didn’t feel grim. The clouds were moving pretty fast, and the cloud cover wasn’t absolute. The sun would peak through the clouds when they quickly drifted by, then cover itself up again a moment later. It was cold front weather. Today is cold, clear, and beautiful. All the clouds have now been pushed completely away by the Siberian wind behind them and left behind an endless clear blue, just like the sky I’m used to seeing on cold days in South Florida.
I leave my room, ready to get out the door and start shopping, but I’m stopped when I see that Karliene is standing by the big sliding glass doors to our balcony, gazing out at the view. It looks like her attention is really focused on something, when she notices I’ve come out of my room.
“Look!”
What am I looking at here?
“It’s snowing. See the snow going by? It’s going by very fast. See it there?”
This is one my least favorite things. When someone tells me to look for something that’s supposedly right in front me. I am massively retarded at this. The most certain failure is when someone wants me to grab something from their desk. If you tell me to get your scissors, they’re just over there on your desk, you will not be getting your scissors in anything approaching a timely manner. It’d be much faster for you to get the scissors yourself. In fact, it might be faster to go down to the nearest grocery store and see if they have a pair of scissors there, because I might not find your damn scissors at all. They’re right WHERE?? THERE’S NOTHING BUT PENS IN THAT CUP. WHERE ELSE ON THE DESK COULD THEY BE??
*ahem*
So, nope, I did not see it there. But I was glad to hear about it. Now I had something more to look forward to when I got downstairs.
The main reason, for those of you who don’t know, that snow is cool is that the way it falls is so darn whimsical. Rain goes in a straight line, almost always. Sometimes when it’s windy, it’s a diagonal line, but it’s still a line. The only time you really see it swirling about is in a hurricane, which, don’t get me wrong, looks really cool, but you so really get to see it, and it tends to be associated with property damage then. The best part of rain is when it’s warm and you don’t have anywhere to be and you can run around in it. The way it falls to the earth isn’t so remarkable, though.
Snow, on the other hand, at least when it’s windy, like it was on Saturday, seems like it doesn’t know what path to take to get to the ground. It draws little curlicues in the air and meanders about for a while before the ground finally says “Okay, that’s enough.” Sometimes it doesn’t hit the ground at all. It gets close and then it pulls a move like that feather in Forrest Gump and just says, Fuck it, man! I’m going back up! and then it swirls back up into the air, mingles with a bunch of friends, loses itself in the crowd, and then goes who knows where. Light snowfall really doesn’t give a fuck where it goes. Anywhere is fine.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen snow since I got here. It was the second. The first time was a couple weeks ago, on a night when it actually wasn’t quite freezing at street level. It was a few degrees warmer on the ground, but it was cold enough in the sky for the clouds to release some tiny, reluctant flakes which melted the instant they made contact with the earth, or with a car, or with my face.
I was in a bus with Jason and Jordan, a couple of Americans who teach in the same city that I do, though not the same school. Jason saw the snow first. Actually, I might not even have recognized it as snow on my own. These were such faint flurries, it was more like swirling dust kicked up by some local construction, or demolition, than any kind of weather phenomenon. I can’t say it was picturesque, is what I’m trying to say. It was the snow equivalent of that little tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. But dammit, in life, your first is always special. You remember your first.
“This is a first for me” I said.
“It must be very magical” Jason said, a little ironically.
The thing was though, it actually WAS magical in a way. Like I said, this was not an impressive snowfall, but it was a snowfall all the same, and it was happening right in front of my eyes. The snow was saying, yup, I’m real. Nice to meet you.
I replied to Jason, “Yes, it is magical. I’m going to remember this forever.” And you know what? For all I know it sounded like I was joking, but I wasn’t. I really will remember how, about a month after I got to Korea, I was riding a bus with Jason and Jordan and I saw snow falling for the first time. That’s going to be in the Korea scrapbook in my head for the rest of my life.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So that’s that.
Almost two months have flown off the calendar and Christmas is almost here. Stony faced Koreans representing the Salvation Army are relentlessly ringing bells in subway stations. We had a secret Santa drawing at work, which we had to do multiple times because of little hitches with the drawing. I drew the same person three times, so I’m not worried about what to get her. If it’s fate, how can I go wrong? People everywhere are talking about their travel plans for Christmas break. Jason and Jordan are going to the Phillipines. Mark and Emma are going back to the UK. I’ll be hollying and jollying and ringing in the new year in Japan. It’s time to get some presents. And fortunately for me, I live in a nation of infinite malls.
I got up on Saturday and got ready to go out shopping. It was gray day, but it didn’t feel grim. The clouds were moving pretty fast, and the cloud cover wasn’t absolute. The sun would peak through the clouds when they quickly drifted by, then cover itself up again a moment later. It was cold front weather. Today is cold, clear, and beautiful. All the clouds have now been pushed completely away by the Siberian wind behind them and left behind an endless clear blue, just like the sky I’m used to seeing on cold days in South Florida.
I leave my room, ready to get out the door and start shopping, but I’m stopped when I see that Karliene is standing by the big sliding glass doors to our balcony, gazing out at the view. It looks like her attention is really focused on something, when she notices I’ve come out of my room.
“Look!”
What am I looking at here?
“It’s snowing. See the snow going by? It’s going by very fast. See it there?”
This is one my least favorite things. When someone tells me to look for something that’s supposedly right in front me. I am massively retarded at this. The most certain failure is when someone wants me to grab something from their desk. If you tell me to get your scissors, they’re just over there on your desk, you will not be getting your scissors in anything approaching a timely manner. It’d be much faster for you to get the scissors yourself. In fact, it might be faster to go down to the nearest grocery store and see if they have a pair of scissors there, because I might not find your damn scissors at all. They’re right WHERE?? THERE’S NOTHING BUT PENS IN THAT CUP. WHERE ELSE ON THE DESK COULD THEY BE??
*ahem*
So, nope, I did not see it there. But I was glad to hear about it. Now I had something more to look forward to when I got downstairs.
The main reason, for those of you who don’t know, that snow is cool is that the way it falls is so darn whimsical. Rain goes in a straight line, almost always. Sometimes when it’s windy, it’s a diagonal line, but it’s still a line. The only time you really see it swirling about is in a hurricane, which, don’t get me wrong, looks really cool, but you so really get to see it, and it tends to be associated with property damage then. The best part of rain is when it’s warm and you don’t have anywhere to be and you can run around in it. The way it falls to the earth isn’t so remarkable, though.
Snow, on the other hand, at least when it’s windy, like it was on Saturday, seems like it doesn’t know what path to take to get to the ground. It draws little curlicues in the air and meanders about for a while before the ground finally says “Okay, that’s enough.” Sometimes it doesn’t hit the ground at all. It gets close and then it pulls a move like that feather in Forrest Gump and just says, Fuck it, man! I’m going back up! and then it swirls back up into the air, mingles with a bunch of friends, loses itself in the crowd, and then goes who knows where. Light snowfall really doesn’t give a fuck where it goes. Anywhere is fine.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen snow since I got here. It was the second. The first time was a couple weeks ago, on a night when it actually wasn’t quite freezing at street level. It was a few degrees warmer on the ground, but it was cold enough in the sky for the clouds to release some tiny, reluctant flakes which melted the instant they made contact with the earth, or with a car, or with my face.
I was in a bus with Jason and Jordan, a couple of Americans who teach in the same city that I do, though not the same school. Jason saw the snow first. Actually, I might not even have recognized it as snow on my own. These were such faint flurries, it was more like swirling dust kicked up by some local construction, or demolition, than any kind of weather phenomenon. I can’t say it was picturesque, is what I’m trying to say. It was the snow equivalent of that little tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. But dammit, in life, your first is always special. You remember your first.
“This is a first for me” I said.
“It must be very magical” Jason said, a little ironically.
The thing was though, it actually WAS magical in a way. Like I said, this was not an impressive snowfall, but it was a snowfall all the same, and it was happening right in front of my eyes. The snow was saying, yup, I’m real. Nice to meet you.
I replied to Jason, “Yes, it is magical. I’m going to remember this forever.” And you know what? For all I know it sounded like I was joking, but I wasn’t. I really will remember how, about a month after I got to Korea, I was riding a bus with Jason and Jordan and I saw snow falling for the first time. That’s going to be in the Korea scrapbook in my head for the rest of my life.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So that’s that.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
kiddies wids
Alright, it’s time I told you all about some kids.
The first thing you need to know about Korean kids is that they love to poke you in the ass. Generally speaking, whenever someone loves to poke you in the ass, that’s the first thing you need to know. Ass poking is a major pasttime for the children, and there is a certain form to it, just like there is a correct form for diving or throwing a baseball. Basically start out with your hands folded, fingers crossed over each other, like you would do in elementary school when you wanted the teacher to know you were being really good. Then pull back your thumbs like the hammers on a pistol. Last, extend your index fingers and keep them together. This is your ram. Make it strong.
Now… poke! Bonus points if you catch someone off guard while they’re standing at a urinal.
OK, so now that you know that most important point, we can talk about a few kids who stand out in my mind in some way.
My first class of the day is Madrid class. 8 students. 6 year olds. (This means they are 5. Koreans reckon age differently. All these kids will turn a year older on Korean New Year’s, and they were all 1 year old when they born. It can be confusing.) Erica, Carrie, Henny, Sally, Elliott, Jade, Amy, Jasmine. We used to have a 9th, Rachel, but she has now left the school because Erica kept punching her. True story. Erica is going to be a mob enforcer one day, I swear.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, because almost all of them can be really funny and cute, but I think Henny stands out as a great example of why it can be great to teach kindergarteners. Henny is ALWAYS happy. He always has a huge grin on his face, no matter what. Even when something is bothering him, like the time I told him I had to confiscate a toy from him for the rest of the class period, he still smiles. I could see by looking at his eyes he was concerned about this toy, kinda worried when he would see it again, but whatever anxiety he was feeling about that, it didn’t reach his smile. He can be happy-go-lucky while protesting someone taking his toy.
He was so hilarious in this month’s “phone teaching”. We call up the kids and talk to them for about 3 minutes, asking them questions about that month’s topic. Sometimes the kids don’t understand what you’re saying, either because they aren’t used to the phone, or the question is just beyond their level. Usually when they don’t understand what you said, you get a long awkward silence followed by a quiet “I don’t know”. Not Henny. Henny was somehow more enthusiastic about not knowing. He seemed to really enjoy not knowing the answer, because then he got to shout “WHAT?!?” into the phone. Kid cracks me up.
I also teach one of the school’s legendary students, the dreaded Michael. He’s one of those kids who’s pretty smart, gets along pretty well with his class mates, but needs to be shouted at roughly six hundred million times a day. He proudly declared to one of his other teachers, (my friendly neighbor, Mark) “Everyone in school knows my name, teacher!”. And Mark told him, “Michael, that is NOT a good thing.” He’s a big time attention seeker, and he knows how to get it. I do really like this kid, though. He’s amazingly creative. One time we had an arts and crafts project that was supposed to teach some basic civics stuff, like what a police officer does. As if they need any help on that one. As all seven year olds will tell you, and show you, police officers shoot people. Duh.
Anyway, the kids were supposed to make some 3d buildings out of these paper cut-outs. Michael wanted to do something a little different with his. Since my job is teaching English, and you don’t learn any more or less English if you make the 3D building model or if you set it on fire instead, I said he could do as he pleased. Three minutes later he had made a box kite with a decorative tail, and was demonstrating it by floating it over our classrooms portable AC. It floated so perfectly, like he’d made dozens of these things before. I was really impressed. Maybe he was just doing it to get people to pay attention to him, but dammit, he did a really good job. He frequently surprises me with his creativity. He’s a great kid, he’s just a pain in the ass to teach.
I feel a lot of affection for the kids overall. Little children are so different from adults. It’s almost like interacting with another species or something. And yet, working with them like this, it struck me almost right away how much kids everywhere are exactly the same. They’re just like I was at that age, just like my friends were. If everyone in the world was required to teach kindergarten for a year to children from a foreign culture, I think racism would be eradicated pretty fast. When you do a job like this, you see how fundamentally similar people are across cultures. No matter where your from, looking into a kindergarten class is like looking into your own past.
Till next time, I love you all,
Randy
The first thing you need to know about Korean kids is that they love to poke you in the ass. Generally speaking, whenever someone loves to poke you in the ass, that’s the first thing you need to know. Ass poking is a major pasttime for the children, and there is a certain form to it, just like there is a correct form for diving or throwing a baseball. Basically start out with your hands folded, fingers crossed over each other, like you would do in elementary school when you wanted the teacher to know you were being really good. Then pull back your thumbs like the hammers on a pistol. Last, extend your index fingers and keep them together. This is your ram. Make it strong.
Now… poke! Bonus points if you catch someone off guard while they’re standing at a urinal.
OK, so now that you know that most important point, we can talk about a few kids who stand out in my mind in some way.
My first class of the day is Madrid class. 8 students. 6 year olds. (This means they are 5. Koreans reckon age differently. All these kids will turn a year older on Korean New Year’s, and they were all 1 year old when they born. It can be confusing.) Erica, Carrie, Henny, Sally, Elliott, Jade, Amy, Jasmine. We used to have a 9th, Rachel, but she has now left the school because Erica kept punching her. True story. Erica is going to be a mob enforcer one day, I swear.
It’s hard to pick a favorite, because almost all of them can be really funny and cute, but I think Henny stands out as a great example of why it can be great to teach kindergarteners. Henny is ALWAYS happy. He always has a huge grin on his face, no matter what. Even when something is bothering him, like the time I told him I had to confiscate a toy from him for the rest of the class period, he still smiles. I could see by looking at his eyes he was concerned about this toy, kinda worried when he would see it again, but whatever anxiety he was feeling about that, it didn’t reach his smile. He can be happy-go-lucky while protesting someone taking his toy.
He was so hilarious in this month’s “phone teaching”. We call up the kids and talk to them for about 3 minutes, asking them questions about that month’s topic. Sometimes the kids don’t understand what you’re saying, either because they aren’t used to the phone, or the question is just beyond their level. Usually when they don’t understand what you said, you get a long awkward silence followed by a quiet “I don’t know”. Not Henny. Henny was somehow more enthusiastic about not knowing. He seemed to really enjoy not knowing the answer, because then he got to shout “WHAT?!?” into the phone. Kid cracks me up.
I also teach one of the school’s legendary students, the dreaded Michael. He’s one of those kids who’s pretty smart, gets along pretty well with his class mates, but needs to be shouted at roughly six hundred million times a day. He proudly declared to one of his other teachers, (my friendly neighbor, Mark) “Everyone in school knows my name, teacher!”. And Mark told him, “Michael, that is NOT a good thing.” He’s a big time attention seeker, and he knows how to get it. I do really like this kid, though. He’s amazingly creative. One time we had an arts and crafts project that was supposed to teach some basic civics stuff, like what a police officer does. As if they need any help on that one. As all seven year olds will tell you, and show you, police officers shoot people. Duh.
Anyway, the kids were supposed to make some 3d buildings out of these paper cut-outs. Michael wanted to do something a little different with his. Since my job is teaching English, and you don’t learn any more or less English if you make the 3D building model or if you set it on fire instead, I said he could do as he pleased. Three minutes later he had made a box kite with a decorative tail, and was demonstrating it by floating it over our classrooms portable AC. It floated so perfectly, like he’d made dozens of these things before. I was really impressed. Maybe he was just doing it to get people to pay attention to him, but dammit, he did a really good job. He frequently surprises me with his creativity. He’s a great kid, he’s just a pain in the ass to teach.
I feel a lot of affection for the kids overall. Little children are so different from adults. It’s almost like interacting with another species or something. And yet, working with them like this, it struck me almost right away how much kids everywhere are exactly the same. They’re just like I was at that age, just like my friends were. If everyone in the world was required to teach kindergarten for a year to children from a foreign culture, I think racism would be eradicated pretty fast. When you do a job like this, you see how fundamentally similar people are across cultures. No matter where your from, looking into a kindergarten class is like looking into your own past.
Till next time, I love you all,
Randy
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Exploring the City by Night
The first couple weeks were long, sometimes in the sense of feeling drawn out, sometimes in the sense of feeling infinite and open. The feeling of endless possibilities that came with being dropped into a new world, an unknown quantity to my colleagues, and untested as an explorer was both liberating and intimidating. Here I can be anyone, and no barrier stands in my path: I'd better not fuck this up!
Basically everyone who decides to dust off for Korea to teach will experience all of the following in the first two weeks: jet lag, illness (from the indigenous germs), feeling in over your head at trying to control kindergarteners, indigestion, and having no phone and no bank account for at least 2 weeks. But more memorably (and therefore, more importantly, once you survive those weeks) you will also see, taste, touch, smell and experience: new food, new streets, weekends out sightseeing, and drinks and fun with colleagues and fellow foreigners who can't wait to welcome you to your new life.
Go up to the top of Namjang tower at night and look out at the lights of Seoul, extending outward in every direction, your field of vision too small to encompass it all, even from here, the top of a tower on the highest hill in the area, once used to light beacon fires warning of enemy attackers. Both the lights and the buildings go on and on forever. The scale of it is incredible. It's as though the city is built of legos. Normally, when you are down there, you are a lego man, or woman. Up in the tower, you are once again a full-sized person, looking down at lego buildings and little lego people that you can watch through high powered binoculars for 1000 Won. Except a lego city is usually confined to a living room, where the walls are less than 10 feet away. Here the city fills a vast, open expanse. Imagine every inch of a meadow covered in the small blocks, or an emptied-out hayfield whose borders are beyond your vision and you start to get a sense of its hugeness. To a new arrival, this view represents all that is unknown--but none of it is unknowable. All you need to do, if you ever want to find out what's there, is to go back down to street level, and start walking. Now more than ever the world's great cities are grounds for endless exploration. There are more than 44,000 people per square mile in Seoul. In that kind of density, you just start walking and you're bound to get somewhere.
Now, I don't actually live in Seoul. I live in Deokso, which is technically considered the outskirts of Seoul. They don't have suburbs here, but if they did, that's what Deokso would be, most likely. If I want to go to downtown Seoul, it takes me about 45 minutes by subway. Between here and there is Donong, Guri, Wangsimni and a few other places whose names are really hard to remember. Each of those places is larger than Deokso, and each of them are technically considered to be outer reaches of Seoul. They are distinct entities, but it's only about 5 minutes rail travel between each one. They almost blend together, with small patches of mostly undeveloped area between. One way to picture it is to imagine the railway lines as fingers extending out from Seoul, and the population centers around the line stops are like the knuckles on the fingers. Deokso is a faraway knuckle.
So, the title of this post is "Exploring the City by Night". By "city" I mean Deokso, not Seoul. This is a city of 80,000, which by Korean standards, is pretty small. But to me, Deokso is still the most urbanized place I've ever lived. Gainesville has a greater overall population, but it doesn't feel half as "cityish" as Deokso (not that that's a bad thing. obviously gainesville is awesome no matter what). Deokso, in turn, is dwarfed by the unfathomable immensity of Seoul. Seoul is taller, deeper, busier, wider. It's an ocean. Deokso is barely larger than the University of Florida campus. And in that space are alleyways filled with neon signs and twenty storey apartment high rises and many more of the markers of possibility that make Seoul such an overwhelming experience to try to drink in from above. Basically, what I'm trying to tell you is, Deokso is the perfect place to wander around by myself. It's geographically small enough that I feel I can get to know its ins and outs easily in 16 months, yet it feels like I'm an ant of an explorer when I stand beneath its tall buildings. This is a place where there is still a strong rural presence. Behind my apartment complex there are small one room houses next to fields that might be about 30 yards square, farmed by families who are living just like their ancestors did, except now their view has white concrete buildings mixed in with the mountains. Oh, and they have cars, TVs, and they send their kids to schools, and they have national health care and... OK, maybe it's a fantasy to imagine that they live just like their ancestors. But it's still striking to start off on a walk with the plan of exploring, to step outside of my building to get a view of tall buildings, a big bridge and a subway station, then to turn around, walk a quarter mile and find myself in cabbage fields where farming families live.
This mix of urban and rural makes me feel like I never know what's around the corner when I toss on my headphones, pick a random direction, and just keep going until my feet tell me to turn around. It's great alone-time, and I know already it's going to be a reliably excellent experience to put on some music, grab a camera (or leave it at home, either way) and just find what's out there in Deokso. I've always enjoyed observing, and I feel like I've landed in a great place to be an observor.
Until next time.
I love the world and that means you.
Randy
Basically everyone who decides to dust off for Korea to teach will experience all of the following in the first two weeks: jet lag, illness (from the indigenous germs), feeling in over your head at trying to control kindergarteners, indigestion, and having no phone and no bank account for at least 2 weeks. But more memorably (and therefore, more importantly, once you survive those weeks) you will also see, taste, touch, smell and experience: new food, new streets, weekends out sightseeing, and drinks and fun with colleagues and fellow foreigners who can't wait to welcome you to your new life.
Go up to the top of Namjang tower at night and look out at the lights of Seoul, extending outward in every direction, your field of vision too small to encompass it all, even from here, the top of a tower on the highest hill in the area, once used to light beacon fires warning of enemy attackers. Both the lights and the buildings go on and on forever. The scale of it is incredible. It's as though the city is built of legos. Normally, when you are down there, you are a lego man, or woman. Up in the tower, you are once again a full-sized person, looking down at lego buildings and little lego people that you can watch through high powered binoculars for 1000 Won. Except a lego city is usually confined to a living room, where the walls are less than 10 feet away. Here the city fills a vast, open expanse. Imagine every inch of a meadow covered in the small blocks, or an emptied-out hayfield whose borders are beyond your vision and you start to get a sense of its hugeness. To a new arrival, this view represents all that is unknown--but none of it is unknowable. All you need to do, if you ever want to find out what's there, is to go back down to street level, and start walking. Now more than ever the world's great cities are grounds for endless exploration. There are more than 44,000 people per square mile in Seoul. In that kind of density, you just start walking and you're bound to get somewhere.
Now, I don't actually live in Seoul. I live in Deokso, which is technically considered the outskirts of Seoul. They don't have suburbs here, but if they did, that's what Deokso would be, most likely. If I want to go to downtown Seoul, it takes me about 45 minutes by subway. Between here and there is Donong, Guri, Wangsimni and a few other places whose names are really hard to remember. Each of those places is larger than Deokso, and each of them are technically considered to be outer reaches of Seoul. They are distinct entities, but it's only about 5 minutes rail travel between each one. They almost blend together, with small patches of mostly undeveloped area between. One way to picture it is to imagine the railway lines as fingers extending out from Seoul, and the population centers around the line stops are like the knuckles on the fingers. Deokso is a faraway knuckle.
So, the title of this post is "Exploring the City by Night". By "city" I mean Deokso, not Seoul. This is a city of 80,000, which by Korean standards, is pretty small. But to me, Deokso is still the most urbanized place I've ever lived. Gainesville has a greater overall population, but it doesn't feel half as "cityish" as Deokso (not that that's a bad thing. obviously gainesville is awesome no matter what). Deokso, in turn, is dwarfed by the unfathomable immensity of Seoul. Seoul is taller, deeper, busier, wider. It's an ocean. Deokso is barely larger than the University of Florida campus. And in that space are alleyways filled with neon signs and twenty storey apartment high rises and many more of the markers of possibility that make Seoul such an overwhelming experience to try to drink in from above. Basically, what I'm trying to tell you is, Deokso is the perfect place to wander around by myself. It's geographically small enough that I feel I can get to know its ins and outs easily in 16 months, yet it feels like I'm an ant of an explorer when I stand beneath its tall buildings. This is a place where there is still a strong rural presence. Behind my apartment complex there are small one room houses next to fields that might be about 30 yards square, farmed by families who are living just like their ancestors did, except now their view has white concrete buildings mixed in with the mountains. Oh, and they have cars, TVs, and they send their kids to schools, and they have national health care and... OK, maybe it's a fantasy to imagine that they live just like their ancestors. But it's still striking to start off on a walk with the plan of exploring, to step outside of my building to get a view of tall buildings, a big bridge and a subway station, then to turn around, walk a quarter mile and find myself in cabbage fields where farming families live.
This mix of urban and rural makes me feel like I never know what's around the corner when I toss on my headphones, pick a random direction, and just keep going until my feet tell me to turn around. It's great alone-time, and I know already it's going to be a reliably excellent experience to put on some music, grab a camera (or leave it at home, either way) and just find what's out there in Deokso. I've always enjoyed observing, and I feel like I've landed in a great place to be an observor.
Until next time.
I love the world and that means you.
Randy
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Life in Korea
It's now been more than a month since I arrived in Deokso. It's easy to remember my arrival anniversary, because it was my birthday. I don't remember what time it was when I walked out of Incheon International to meet the cab driver sent by the school. I was bleary-eyed and dog tired, near the point of hallucination. Somehow, I forgot to check the time. In fact, all I really remember of that cab ride was the feeling of taking in all the red neon crosses that top every church in Korea. In a country that averages more than 1200 people per square mile, you can find a church every few hundred yards, so when an exhausted traveler crosses 30 or so miles of it as the passenger in a car that is out late enough at night on a weeknight to be almost alone on the road, he will find himself in a surreal landscape of bright, ominous Christian symbolism in an otherwise blurred together mass of cityscape. It felt like we were travelling from cross to cross, the way a monkey swings from branch to branch. They were everywhere. I can see four red neon crosses from the balcony of my apartment, each to a different church.
So, anyway, that was my first impression of the country. The next thing I remember was arriving at Mark and Emma's apartment in Deokso at about 1 AM, October 13th. It seemed perfectly timed. It felt symbolic that I would be starting a new year surrounded by new people, exploring new places.
It's pointless to try to accurately recall the first week. I was jet lagged all to hell after 20 hours of flying, and, like most people who do this, I got sick almost right away. Between the ordeal of traveling and the sudden exposure to the unique strains of cold of a different region of the world, first week illness is almost a given. So, between those two things, and the sheer overwhelming nature of a new job in a new country with a different language, different food, different everything, it's all blurred together.
I remember that teaching kindergarten seemed crazy hard. I thought that there would be a Korean teacher in class at all times. It turns out, that's mostly just in public schools, and that I'd be on my own every class, every day. That had me thinking "Oh, shit!" until everyone assured me that I would be fine, and everyone figures out the teaching eventually. I remember finding it very easy to get along with Mark and Emma right away, and going with them on a great trip out to Seoul where we wandered into a brand new exhibit on Korea's most legendary monarch, King Sejong, and then visiting the nearby Imperial Palace, where the grounds, which are vast and beautifully landscaped just took my breath away. Beyond that, things are a little sketchy.
I remember my general state was one of being caught between excitement and stress. So much of what I was experiencing was wonderful. The restaurants are great. The view from the apartment. The river that lies just past the train station (that's a pic from some tall grasses along the bank up at the top). On my second day at school, we had a field trip up in the mountains. The views were so gorgeous. I wish I'd had a camera. I wanted to be able to share it with everyone. But then I remembered we were only 30 minutes from where I lived, and I could go hiking at places just like this almost any weekend I choose.
All of this was amazing, but I still had some sources of anxiety. Would I really be able to figure out teaching kindergarten? And, although I liked the teachers at school and felt confident I'd be able to make plenty of friends, I hadn't done so just yet. It's a little scary not to know many people when you're in a new place.
Since then though, things have just gotten better. I'm meeting new people all the time. Just last night I went to big meet-up in Seoul of foreigners and Koreans who want to meet foreigners. I went by myself, but that was no problem at all. I immediately found people who seemed really good to talk to, and spent the next 3 hours chatting with Dan from Canada, Rob from Boston, and Chris and Mika, sisters from Korea. That's the way it's generally been with regards to meeting people here. It's a cinch.
As for teaching, I've discovered you get what you give. If I take the time and plan my lessons, so I always have something to do, and always have a back-up plan in case my first plan isn't working out so well, then lessons are a blast. When you know right what you're doing, you can have fun and teach effectively at the same time, and work is like play. When I'm not prepared, improvising just doesn't cut it, and I get this fish-on-land-thrashing-around type feeling. This weekend (just today, in fact) I wrote up lesson plans for the entire upcoming week. I've learned.
OK, so that's it for now! I'll be updating this blog every Sunday, and maybe other times too. I will continue to use facebook for pictures.
Until next time,
Randy
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