Jebudo

We went to Jebu Island this past weekend to dig for clams and shrimp. Jebu is an island that is connected by a causeway that submerges with the tide, so you are at the mercy of the Moon which as it turned out was full.

It is a small island, we spent Saturday before and after lunch circumnavigating before checking into our hotel. Even though it is late in the season, all the hotels were full. The island is very popular with a couple of the big universities and younger families. There are no gas stations, one pharmacy,very few cars and plenty of fireworks! Shooting off fireworks is, aside from digging for clams and shrimp, the biggest distraction.

 One thing I was struck by was the lack of any urban planning. Most of the buildings on the island are hideous; what little space there is to develop (the  local government has made the two "mountains" on the island unavailable) is poorly used.

Altogether we had a very pleasant time even though overcast was about as sunny as it got that weekend. Still, the air was warmer and cleaner than Seoul and it was nice to cross a street without having to look for cars.

Suwon People's Festival

Went to Suwon  over the Columbus Day holiday on a beautiful Saturday in October and trooped around the old palace grounds that is the scene of a famous "peoples festival."

Suwon is about 60 kilometers south of Seoul and a good part of the city is still inside the old walls. The festival is held every year, and features martial arts from the Lee period, as well as local delicacies of which Kalbi is perhaps the most famous.  Naturally we picked the last day of the festival to attend, and it was packed! The festival, aside from martial arts and local foods, also features a re-inactment of an imperial procession. There are Also period costumes you can don and after some amount of cajoling we managed to get Winter to dress up as a palace guard and have his picture taken. 

Although the region is supposed to be well know for Kalbi [better known to most of us as Korean Bar-B-Qu] we found the food was only fair to middling and expensive. The Local beef is twice the amount of American beef and only eaten half the time, or that was our observation. American beef was bigger and, ok, ok, maybe I am prejudiced, taster.

One of the highlights of the afternoon was the Korean Archery. Winter and I both tried our hand at shooting ten arrows each: we both only hit the target once! The bows don't require a lot of strength in terms of the draw, but they "pull" to the left and it wasn't until the last few shots that we both "adjusted fire." 

If you happen to be in South Korea in early October and

want to experience something "local" in flavor, I can heartily recommend the Suwon People's Festival held annually in mid-October. To get there, the easiest thing to do is take the  train from Yongsan station: express trains leave on the hour, the journey time is approximately 40 minutes. Once in Suwon, intrepid types can walk the 2 kilometers to the old castle gounds, or you can hop a local bus (always an adventure in itself). Sun block and water are two good things to carry along, and perhaps a camp stool: event seating is under capactiy.

Monsoon Season

Weather here lately has been overcast, muggy with thunderstorms, hard rain and drizzle;  punctuated with occasional feeble moments of sunshine.

Since Winter returned from California, we have only had a few outings—one to what was billed as a "robot museum" turned out to be nothing more than a glorified personal collection of robot related toys: unanimous disappointment.

There have been some high-points though,  Jae has started improving a pants design that I think will be intriguing to trendsetters. Winter is managing to refine his penmanship. And losing my current line of work for something that has real purpose and meaning is beginning to look like something beyond action potential: I'm interviewing for a gig twisting on toothpaste caps!

More to follow.

Haedon Yonggung Sa

One of the highlights on the first day of our trip to Busan was a visit to The Temple of Neptune's Palace (this I believe is the best translation of the Korean - Haedon YonggungSa.

There are one hundred and twenty-seven steps from the two golden dragon pillars to the bridge that spans a narrow inlet. Good news is there is a  cool ocean breeze you can enjoy at both ends of the journey.

The temple was founded during the Goryeo Dynasty in 1376 and claimed (rightfully) as one of the most interesting temples in Busan: "true that." There are numerous statues and wonderful carvings on the trail up and down. Thousands of people make this trek from all over the region and beyond to pray and make offerings for the goodness that they have experienced.  It is written in a stone before the pilgrim takes the stairs to the temple by the sea, that you need to bring a wish with all you heart and soul, and with the help of the Buddha's guidance God will hear your prayer.

With that in mind Jae and I descended the stairs.

Among the many sculptures and carvings we found one of a bronze dragon whose flanks were adorned with hundreds of tiny buddhas. We were told that the tiny buddhas were offerings from parents for their children to help them with their studies: that's when the proverbial light bulb turned on.

I put our Little Buddha where only I could reach, far and away from the others, and with plenty of  aloha.

A Night Out in Hongdae

Jae and I went out Friday to Hongdae which is one of many university districts here in Seoul. We found a very good fairly priced Indian restaurant called Yeti where the food was served without any panjan (Korean pickled dishes).  The nan was fresh, the curry toothsome and the Tandoori authentic. The whole fixed price meal included five courses and two glasses of wine for ₩35,000 which is llike $29.00 USD. The experience made us think that perhaps the further away from Itaewon one travels, the more authentic the international cuisine becomes: need more data to support this theory, so we'll be returning to Hongdae before Winter come home from summer with Grandma.

After supper we went to a small park across t he street from the restaurant we had noticed on an earlier family afternoon outing we all made in May that hosts local bands on weekend evenings. We found a group called Soundbox playing. Very entertaining, to say the least. I recorded a short video of  two Korean fellows tap dancing to the band's international/world beat  rhythms. (As soon as I can clean up the video snippet, I will add that to this post.)

Spent the rest of the evening cruising streets packed with people and lights: entertainment at its best.

Gyeongbokgung in the Spring

We retraced our steps from winter with a visit to Gyeongbokgung, the main palace grounds for the Lee dynasty with our friend Garth Muncy who was doing a "visa Hula" from Shanghai. The palace grounds are a whole lot more enjoyable when it isn't in the low twenties. It was a clear Sunday  afternoon, with only occasionally passing clouds, and the humidity was fairly low.
I figure that going to the palace will be a standard distraction for friends and relatives that visit us while we are here. The grounds are extensive and in two visits this year we have only seen about two thirds of the palaces.
There is a good sized pond in the middle of the grounds that has a "tea house" where the Emperor would meet with his concubine of the day.   The building and the bridge are not accessible to the average sight-seer, but I understand "VIPs" are given tours that shows just how good it was to be king.
We all had lunch in Insadong, which is a cleaner, artsier version of Namdaemun. Found an interesting restaurant whose name escapes me but I  could find again, that had a garden as it's center piece and served up an outstanding "seafood pancake" or hamul pachun.  Have to go back there again some day.

Sunday at Hongik University

Took the subway over to the Hongik Station where the famous University of that name has its campus on a beautiful Sunday afternoon with highs in the low seventies. Hongik University is South Korea’s premier school for the arts and applied technology. There was an exam being given (Korean’s seem to favor cruel and unusual punishment, like exams on beautiful Sunday afternoons) so the University Art gallery was closed.  In any case, the purpose of our junket was reconnaissance: we will return on a Saturday when there is even more hustle and bustle.

We had lunch in a great noodle shop right across from the Hongik Free Market. The menu sported nine dishes five different types of noodles, two fried rice and a plain-Jane bowl of white rice in addition to 6 soda flavors and one brand beer which happened to be Cass, a favorite of mine. The food was great for the price and the “automated waiter/cashier” could be the subject of a Korean Take Away entry. Basically a customer uses a touch screen kiosk in the front of the restaurant to select your dish and beverage, you pay, a ticket goes to the kitchen and hey presto, the only actual real-live waiter/waitress brings your food and beverage in short order.  When your finished your meal,  you just walk away. No waiting to place your order or pay for it.

 

So after lunch we steamed across the street to examine the free market. There was only one visual artist with a sign that said no photos, which was unnecessary: why waste allocated memory? Dreadfully boring landscapes poorly defined compositions punctuated by rudimentary application of contrived impasto. But some of the crafters had some very interesting creations, among them a woman making lovely silk wallets.

DongDaeMun |Walmart's got nothing on this Baby!

It's no wonder there are no Walmarts in Korea when you have things like DongdadaeMun (BigEastGate) which is a shopping district in Seoul.  (if you go to Wally World's site or read news about the topic the spin is that Walmart couldn't capture Asian likes/styles - Pish!)


The truth is, there are markets in every major city in the Republic of Korea that offer better prices every second of every day, albeit without the superfluous and superficial fluff that Walmart throws in at minimum wage (unless of course you're a woman and then it's less ;>)

And the markets here are truly competitive: capitalism at it's best. Take the picture to the right. The foreground diminishes about two blocks away and every partition is a different store with different prices. This is just one building that occupies two city blocks. There are about four like it in the neighborhood offering finished garments. not to mention the half dozen or so three story buildings adjacent that sell yardage and haberdashery.


Best part is, the price tag in these markets is meaningless! (Whoa, can you imagine WallyWorld working like that?) In this (real) market the consumer gets to bid.  Truly refreshing to find actual capitalism, not the chopped up, corporated, neo-Americanisim-post-world-war-two brand Goldman-Fat-Ass-Sachs crap that most of us living in America have come to regard as freedom of choice.


Such a wonder that Walmart and other conglomerates have failed here miserably.

Crossing the Han

Winter and I finally made the daring move on our bicycles across the Han river this weekend, if even by accident. Originally we thought we would ride over towards Yongsan, but when we saw another cyclist  coming up a pedestrian underpass, we just had to explore. So glad we did!

The underpass lead to a bike path that skirts the river below the freeway (which also skirts the river).  Bikers everywhere, some riding in organized groups, some solos, some Mom and Pops with Kid ridding between: really marvelous. Most everyone was riding street or mountain bikes but Winter and  the only BMX bikes on the trail (and off the trail too) and that was all the difference: we went where no Seouls had gone before!

Getting back to the house from the south side was an adventure because we crossed the Hannam Bridge which is really only designed for automobiles. We had to negotiate a narrow pedestrian/bicycle (with he occasional scooter going the opposite direction) extension on the main roadway which lead us back to our neighborhood. From there, smooth sailing.

The whole trip with a couple of breaks was, roughly, an enjoyable  hour and a half.

N.B. Now unlike cyclists in the Islands (or on the Mainland) even if you're a  "Sunday Syclist"  you have to deck out in the latest cycling fashion.   Spandex is a must if even for the occasional, part-time, dilettante! It doesn't matter how much or how often you ride (even if it is but once a year) Spandex, with plenty of "sponsored" logos is haute equipe.

Korean Take Away: Bathrooms Part II

At first glance, this toilet looked pretty scary: Americans don't generally have remote controls or a plug on their "thrones."  At this point though, I can't imagine life without the Toilet/Bidet combo. Before we leave I am going to purchase two of these pups, maybe even three (backup is important).

This particular model has three presets that will accommodate most users, with a fourth that is ready for programming. The seat is heated which is a real pleasant surprise on winter mornings here in the R.O.K. Of course this can be turned off (and we will) for the summer months.  The water and air (yes, you actually get your ocole blow dried at the end of the process) are both temperature controlled in addition to water pressure. (That is a good thing!)

Additionally, the water nozzle can move forward and back, massaging one's tenders while cleaning. Remarkable.  At the end of the cycle, all one needs to do is blot dry: not a spec is left on the paper either. Never again will I shit like a heathen!

Made In China: Carcinogenic Sand Storms.

There are a lot of things that are made in China, toxic children’s formula, poisonous toys, unbridled censorship, but my favorite is “Yellow Sand.”

Yellow Sand is a natural occurrence that has happened every year since men (and women) were living in caves. Winds seasonally generated in Siberia blow through the Gobi picking up sand which ends up predominately over the Korean Peninsula and Japan,  but can deposit dust as far away as Hawaii and California with all the spots in between. The Chinese have found a way to augment this phenomenon with their crappy practices of disposing toxic industrial wastes into, among other places, the Gobi Desert.

So now, aside from just your Plane Jane grit, you get to count on all sorts of other goodies.  Sulfur (an acid rain component), soot, ash, carbon monoxide, and other toxic pollutants including heavy metals (such as mercury, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, lead, zinc, copper) and other carcinogens, often accompany the dust storms, as well as viruses, bacteria, fungi, pesticides, antibiotics, asbestos, herbicides, plastic ingredients, like the discarded melamine that didn’t make it into baby formula.

Of course China isn’t to blame completely. Aside from their homegrown greedy reprobates, there are multinational culprits, most of which hang their shingles in Europe and the United States. The same mephitic companies that promote global material consumption on a hitherto unknown scale, the same miscreant companies and their attendant bankers that are continuing to fleecing the average Joe, or Chou with usury credit rates that they hope will off-set their losses from various “exotic” financial “instruments” gone bad are as much to blame as the poor scrub, nascent Chinese capitalists straining to get on the profit train that dump their unusable wastes into places like the Gobi for the rest of us to breathe.

Really can’t blame the Chinese for everything Made in China, when the reason for being Made in China lies largely with the “smart” guys on Wall Street, The City and in places as seemingly off the beaten track as  Omaha.

 I wonder when the rest of us will wake up and realize that the smart guys are really only smart when it comes to finding ways to fill their pockets no matter  the cost.  Someday,  the greater good for the many, will trump the greater greed of the few: I hope there is still breathable air for those that live to see that day.

International Restaurants in Seoul

While the verdict isn't in completely on international cuisine here in Seoul, for the most part the jury is leaning towards guilty of crimes against the palate. Granted we have only been here for three months, and we have only sampled every Mexican restaurant in Itaewon and Noksapyong, half the Indian and Italian restaurants, but to-date, the experiences have been poor to disappointing with an occasional bout of mediocre.

Basically international restaurateurs are cooking for locals, and that means that every meal, without exception, will have some sort of pickled vegetable served along with the nosh, even if that is not the custom of the country in which the dish originated. Invariably the meal will be spicy, again, even if the dish is not typically prepared that way: spicy Sauce Alfredo? Or how about a yellow curry without any hint of coconut milk - apparently many Koreans don’t care for the taste, so just leave it out even if it’s your great-grandmother’s revered recipe.

Nothing is butchered worse than Mexican food. Apparently, flour tortillas cannot be eaten without toasting.  So that means a burrito will have a “crunchy” wrapper.  Tacos are equally disappointing because good sauce is apparently impossible to find. And forget about anything that needs to be made with Masa Hernia.

But here’s the good news: the local food is excellent and cheap. So if you are here in Seoul, and you find yourself hankering for some Pizza (Pizza without corn or sweet potatoes in the crust) or some Spaghetti Puttanesca  save yourself the disappointment and cook it yourself.

Seoul Tower

We went over to Seoul Tower, a landmark on Sannam which is one of the largest mountains in the city center the day before Valentine's  Took the tram up the side of the hill which is a must unless of course you want to really work the calves and thighs.

Air quality was not the best in terms of visibility, but the scenery was still striking in terms of expanse. In the photo to the belo, after the first set of low lying hills, you might just be able to make out a larger, haze ridden line of taller mountains.

Those mountains are some 30 km to the northeast, and beyond that there is still the city of Seoul. New York just doesn't compare, and Los Angeles, despite it's sprawl, seems almost parochial in comparison while Honolulu, our home, seems nothing more than a large town.

Now, if you ever make the trip to the tower (and we plan to do it  right the next time around) be sure to take a padlock with you.  Uniquely Korean, taking a perfectly good padlock (with or without a plastic heart or equally durable substrate that you can personalize) and chaining it to the observation

guard fence at the top of the observatory on Seoul Tower is a must! It's like spelling out your name with coral on lava rock (Big Island of Hawaii) or carving your name on the leaf of an Autograph Tree (most Pacific islands).  And the best part is if you return, in say ten years or so, your lock will still be there: we were told that some of the locks had been there since the late eighties!

A nice way to secure a memory in the Heart of Asia.

Korean Take Away: Bathrooms

Some Asian countries like Japan and Taiwan have a better handle on bathrooms than America and most European countries, but neither holds a candle to what I have seen here in Korea.

Koreans really know how to do a bathroom right!

Take the place we’re renting as an example, it has in the master bathroom, a Jacuzzi with a shower attachment for rinsing down after relaxing in addition to a separate shower stall that is 3’ x 4’. The entire bathroom is 8’ x 10’, tiled to within a couple of feet of the ceiling, and has two stainless 48” x 4” floor drains that run the length of the room.

Cleaning redefines “spray and wash.” Just shoot the whole place down including the toilet and sink with your favorite cleaner, have at the tough spots with a pair of scrub brushes, ( I favor a large area and a smaller detail brush) then grab one of the showers and open ‘er up full blast. All the crud goes down into the floor drains which get a dose of cleaner too. Of course you do have to move the toilet paper and anything else like towels out of the way, but the whole process can take less than 15 minutes, and the bathroom is spotless when you’re finished, and there is a mischievous fun to hose down things you would normally use a sponge on your knees to clean.

Everyone enjoys the Jacuzzi, but especially Winter who has found a whole new use for shampoo, which he has explained to me that professional bubble blowers prefer for bubble blowing.

The Korean style bathroom is decidedly a “take away” to Hawaii when we return: never again will I bathe or clean a bathroom like a heathen.

Schooling in Korea

Well before we left, I was convinced that the last place I would want Winter going to school was the Department of Defense (DoD) run Seoul Elementary School on Yongsan Garrison. I figured that it would be full of Army, Navy, Air and Marine brats that "couldn't wait to get home." The last thing Jae or I wanted was to insulate the lad from the Korean Culture, one of our reasons for being here, and the feeling was that placing him in a DoD school would isolate him from the bi-cultural exposure we feel is important.


I couldn't have been more wrong.

Second week we were here, after we secured the villa (read flat) we put all our attention into the school side of the relocation. We wanted to find a school that would encourage bi-lingual speech, foster an interest and appreciation of Korean culture, and keep him up to speed with things a third grader should have under his belt, like multiplication tables, and writing a book report in more than three sentences about a book that was several hundred pages.

We targeted three schools in proximity to the house, all of which make Punahou or Iolani back home look "economic" in terms of tuition,* Seoul Foreign School, Yongsan International School of Seoul and Centennial Christian School. In short all three were unsuitable, but the common thread was that in each case, Korean language was not allowed to be used during school! And in two of the three, Koreans were by far the majority of kids (so much for the "International Flavor")

So there we were at the beginning of the third week of January, with Winter already on an extended vacation with no school. Reluctantly, I trundled over to the DoD Superintendent's office, and what a surprise. Besides having and encouraging Korean on the playground, and when teacher isn't addressing the class. There are Korean Studies classes third graders must take. Hell, if you want, you can specify a Korean teacher, space allowing, of which the school hires a fair number who teach the span from First to Fifth grade (it is one of the largest DoD schools in the entire military system as it turns out.) Best part is, he takes the bus every morning and afternoon a short ride which he enjoys and it is free!

So once again, it has been made plain to me as it has before, the best solution is not only closer, it is often the one of which I have the strongest presumptions: clearly I till have some more learning to do!


*No school out here at the elementary level is under $20,000 per year when all is said and done and the DoD school is the most expensive, but the most bi-cultural, which is priceless.

Gyeongbok Palace

We arrived at Gyeongbok Palace which means Shining Happiness one Saturday just in time for the guard changing ceremony. The main gate (Kwanghwa-mun) separates Gyeongbok Palace from one of the busiest areas of Seoul. Gyeongbok Palace was built as the primary palace of the Chosun Kingdom by its founder, King Taejo in 1395, the fourth year of his reign.

It was destroyed during the Japanese invasion of 1592 and was gradually restored over the next 250 years, but starting in 1865, it was rebuilt to its original grandeur by the father of the last  Emperor of Korea.


When Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, most of the 200 building on the palace grounds were torn down again by the Japanese, leaving only a dozen structures.


(Such a mystery why there is still lingering animosity between the two nations!)

The South Korean Government has spent the past twenty years finishing the job of rebuilding much of what was destroyed and neglected.  The architecture is impressive, not as gaudy as the Chinese nor as subdued as the Japanese: something perfectly in the middle. Certainly makes me believe, as many Koreans do, that the Japanese borrowed heavily from the Korean aesthetic when developing their own.

We spent two and half hours wandering around and only saw about half of the grounds before the weather got the best of us and we left for Insadong, one of the older markets in Seoul in pursuit of lunch.

We will be heading back to Gyeonbok when Spring has sprung for a picnic and a look at the other half we didn't see!

The First Three Weeks

We (Winter, Jae and myself) departed Saturday 2 January 2010 from Honolulu and arrived on Sunday 3 January at Incheon International airport on the heels of the biggest snowstorm to hit the Korean peninsula in 108 years.

I chose a hotel I found on the internet because it was a five minute walk to work, but I didn't realize we had booked ourselves into a hotel that are generally used by "lovers." So it had a really great bathroom, and mood lighting, and it was overheated, but it didn't have anything that a family of three would call a kitchenette. Our stay there was short but quite pleasant: the hotel staff were helpful and attentive.

In any case, Jae found a nice two room villa within a couple of days of our arrival that has a great view, a kitchen, washer, two great bathrooms (no mood lighting) but the house is located  only a few blocks from the subway stop that takes me two stations away to work and back, Winter's school bus stop is only a short five minute walk from the house. (More about finding a school later).

We live in an area called Hannam-Dong which is southeast of Itaewon, a district that is an international ghetto created by the South Korean government to contain "foreigners." Itaewon is the place to go for everything from an "authentic"  Armani to an equally authentic "Rolex."  Itaewon's peak (it is one of several hills around the city) is crowned with the largest mosque in this part of asia which has added to my "situational awareness."

Jae assures me that the government is vigilant about foreigners.