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.
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