MAY 3: FUKUOKA AND THE REST OF NAGASAKI
Yes, I know I am cheating by placing a May post on the April page. Sue me for all I'm worth, and if you win I'll have my attorney send you the nickle in the mail. The thing is, I want to keep the Japan stuff together and I have finally gotten around to posting all of my photos on the Flickr site and to writing this summary.
Fukuoka was neither of waste of time nor one of my, say, 15 favorite cities I have ever visited. It's best known among foreigners living in South Korean as the "visa run city" -- when teachers need an E-2 visa to be employed here, they hop on the ferry in Busan, head to Fukuoka, perhaps watch a SoftBank Hawks baseball game, maybe indulge in the ramen that's supposed to be the best in Japan (I don't know, given that I didn't eat any ramen there, much less in every other Japanese city) and then head home.
I didn't catch a baseball game because the Hawks were on the road, but I did enjoy the serenity of Ohori Park and catch the ruins of the old Fukuoka Castle.
That's Ohori Park in the foreground and the skyline of Fukuoka in the background. To the right is the Yahoo! Dome, home of the SoftBank Hawks. SoftBank, incidentally, is not a bank but an telecommunications company.
Fukuoka struck me as very clean and friendly. Expats and natives were equally helpful when I needed some direction, and the cabs were exponentially cheaper than Tokyo's. The streets were clean and the transit was efficient. You can check out my photo album of Fukuoka here. Much of it focuses on Ohori Park, the castle ruins and some wide shots of the cityscape. Oh, and also the ferry terminal with the wedding aisle on the roof.
The purpose of my trip to Nagasaki was, quite honestly, to visit the atomic bomb-related sites. My U.S. history books in school kinda sorta glossed over the bombings as, "And then we ended the war and life was wonderful again, the end." I wanted to see more, and as you may or may not have read in my April 28 entry, I did.
Spectacles Bridge was built in 1634. That makes it the oldest stone arch bridge in Japan and two years younger than the average starter for the Boston Celtics.
Now, I wish I had stayed an extra day or two. There are gardens, churches, islands and museums that I didn't see. There's more than a handful of temples as well, which I saw in rat-a-rat fashion on Saturday evening, after I had dined on a very filling bowl of champon, a filling noodle dish that, although its origin is Chinese, is famous in Nagasaki. The good news is, I found a sushi place in which I ate 22 pieces of sushi, plus dessert and Miso soup, and paid about 15 U.S. dollars for it. To learn more about Nagasaki, I suggest you click on this link to More Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. The guy's photography puts mine to shame. He really makes an effort to scope out the areas he visits and take some interesting shots.
And when you're done looking at his work, please click here to view my humble offerings.
Questions, comments, demands or suggestions can be sent here, or leave a comment on the Mark Fitzhenry's "Korea Blogging!" page here.
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APRIL 29: ACTUAL SNIPPET FROM A CONVERSATION CLASS
Upon learning that my lower-level but well-meaning middle school student had a pet fish ...
Me: "What color is your fish?"
Student: "Red."
Me: "Does your fish have a name?"
Student: "Goldfish."
Questions, comments, demands or suggestions can be sent here, or leave a comment on the Mark Fitzhenry's "Korea Blogging!" page here.
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APRIL 28: ATOMIC BOMB MUSEUM, NAGASAKI
I was warned -- online, in travel guides and by friends who had visited Hiroshima -- ahead of my trip to Nagasaki that after visiting the Atomic Bomb Museum, I would need time to decompress. All of the warnings were accurate. I was near tears in the museum, and only after I left the beautiful, monument-filled Peace Park was I able to get over what I saw.
Nagasaki has rebuilt itself wonderfully, as I will expound upon in another blog entry. But for now I wanted to give you a quick summary of the museum and surrounding parks. A link to a fairly thorough photo album is at the end of this entry.
I visited three atomic bomb-related places: the hypocenter, where the bomb detonated at 11:02 a.m. that day; the museum, which opened in 1996; and the Peace Park, which is a short walk from the museum.
The bomb detonated about 500 meters above the black monolith in this photo:
The monolith was built in 1956. To the right is a section of the Urakami Cathedral that survived the blast and has been relocated here.
This is ground level at the time of the bombing. It has been preserved behind glass. Nearly everything within 2.5 kilometers of the blast was destroyed.
The area around the hypocenter has statues and monument to the 149,000 people who were killed or injured by the end of 1945; the total death count from the bomb remains a mystery in part because nobody is sure how many people died because of radiation-related causes.
The most striking plaque I read was an apology to Korea. I did not know that more than 10,000 Koreans died because of the atomic bomb. Japan annexed Korea (which was not divided between North and South until after World War II) in 1910 and, among other atrocities, brought more than 2.3 million Koreans to Japan to work as slaves. About 30,000 were in the Nagasaki area at the time of the blast, and at least a third were exposed to the blast because they were working outside at the time. The plaque reads, in part: "Here we apologize to Korea and the Koreans for the immeasurable suffering that we inflicted upon them during those tragic years." I knew of the many injustices Japan inflicted on Korea but was unaware of the death toll resulting from the Nagasaki bomb.
I left the hypocenter area to the museum, which has three main sections. The first shows life in an unsuspecting Nagasaki on the morning of the attack. The second second shows the damages -- bent steel, charred concrete, photos of charred bodies and skeletons, clocks stopped at 11:02, a bridge support post that was blown off the ground, a helmet with remains of a skull in it, an exhibit detailing the effects of radiation, photos of burns, melted bottles, history of radiation damage, and, most stirring of all, the testimony of people who survived the attack. It was frightening to hear those people talk about what happened: the quick flash of light, the flattened buildings, the screams of children begging for water as they died, people with wood impaled in their bodies, skin burned red or purple, victims piled in shelters wondering what the hell just hit them.
This clock stopped at 11:02 when the bomb detonated.
The mangled legs of a middle school's water tower.
Also, the museum does not hide that Japan wanted to build an empire. There was a map that showed all of the territory it has won or tried to get all over the Pacific. Japan did not play itself up as a victim that did nothing. But the museum did go to great lengths, as it should, that the victims of the attack were civilians, and most of them were women and children.
The third section of the museum focuses on the history of nuclear weapons after Nagasaki. They detail (via a wall display and a haunting video) the 2,000-plus nuclear tests that have occurred above and below ground each year. Sadly, decades of testing in Kazakhstan has given those citizens unfathomable health problems.
A five-minute walk then took me to the Peace Park, home of the Fountain of Peace, the Peace Statue, and a World Peace Symbol Zone with 15 sculptures donated by 15 countries.
The Peace Statue.
A statue from the World Peace Symbol Zone.
If you have not done so already, please check out the photo album I posted on Flickr. There's a lot more stuff than I posted here.
In closing ...
For my photo album on Flickr, click here.
Questions, comments, demands or suggestions can be sent here, or leave a comment on the Mark Fitzhenry's "Korea Blogging!" page here.
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APRIL 26: FRACTURED FERRY TALES
A good precaution when traveling to another country is to have your destinations written on a piece of paper in that homeland's language, thus limiting any headaches between yourself and the native cab driver who must take you places. The thing is, I have gotten so used to living in South Korea that I hardly ever do it here -- and it almost cost me Friday as I began my three-day weekend trip to Japan.
I had less than an hour before my scheduled ferry departure from Busan, located on the southeast tip of Korea, to Fukuoka. I approached the cab driver outside Busan Station with a simple instruction: "International ferry." I realize this may sound incredibly stupid to you, seeing that "international" and "ferry" are not Korean words. However, there are many phrases in which the Koreans simply keep the English words and speak them with their Kongelish accent -- bus terminal is "bus-uh tuh-mi-nal," for example. So when a co-worker told me that the cab driver should understand "international ferry," it made sense to me. And when I said the words to my driver Friday morning, he nodded and smiled, which was good enough for me as I dumped my backpack and carefully crept into the back seat with my large Dunkin Donuts coffee and two donuts.
After pulling out, the driver slowed to a crawl and looked back. "International ferry," I repeated. Nope -- he didn't understand.
"In-tuh-nah-shun-ul perry," I enunciated in Kongelish, complete with the "p" replacing the "f." Um, no.
I typed "ferry" into my cell phone dictionary and showed him. No dice.
I did the same with "boat." He looked, repeated the words, I waited with hope ... and then he shook his head.
"Korea to Japan, Japan to Korea," I motioned with my finger while pointing at the cell phone with the Korean words for "boat" still displayed. I even said "Dong Hae" for "East Sea." No again. And now the cab fare was rising, having gone past the required distance covered by the starting fee of 2,220 won, and we were heading in the opposite direction of the ferry terminal.
I called the Korean free tourism hotline, so I could request that they translate for me. All English speakers were busy and I would have to wait. Meanwhile the driver was no keener on my destination than he was three minutes ago when he nodded and smiled and motioned for me to get in.
At this point, I told him I was getting out. He moaned and shook his head. He also pointed at the fare and insisted I pay. In his defense, I should have had the name of the terminal written down in Hangul, seeing as we were in Korea. In my defense, I told him the destination before we took off, and he was milking me for money while still having a better chance at describing the molecular structure of a spoiled watermelon than he was at understanding what I wanted.
Here! I want to go here!
As I exited the cab and grabbed my backpack from the back seat, I saw a woman walking toward me. As one last shot, I asked if she spoke English. She said yes and she kindly told the cab driver where I wanted to go. Hopefully there were two lessons learned here. For me, when in doubt, have the destination written in Hangul. For cab drivers, don't pick us up and start driving if you don't know what we want. If only I could tell them that in Hangul.
As for the ferry ride, it was a pretty cool experience. I traveled to Japan on the South Korean Kobee vessel. For the return trip I rode on the Japanese Beetle. They are essentially the same vessel, with seating on two floors. When scooting across the Pacific, the hull rises above the water, so it's a smooth ride. It travels with such speed that people are not allowed on the outside of the boat -- they must stay in the cabin. I also was warned to keep my seatbelt on, because on occasion the boat must avoid the path of whales "and other sea creatures."
The seats have more width and legroom than an airplane. To Japan, I sat in the equivalent of coach class, which is comfortable enough. Back to South Korea I rode in the special Green seats for an extra $35:
I thought I was in for a special treat on the return trip, because the TV screen was showing a live Japanese pro baseball game. Plus, I had free green tea and a box of chocolate and pastry, because, you know, I'm in the green seats and I'm special. Then, just as I settled in, the TVs played an ad for a new Japanese phone that could also be used in Korea, and the video starred two overcute, overacting girls who thought it was just like OMG the greatest thing ever to take a mobile phone photo of bibimbap.
I wanted baseball. I got Japan's version of "The Hills."
Travel note: Here are all the modes of transportation I used Sunday. I took the tram from my hostel to the bus station in Nagasaki. Took a two-hour bus ride to Fukuoka. After lunch I boarded a city bus to the ferry terminal. Rode the ferry to Busan. Walked to Busan Station. Rode the high-speed train for 63 minutes to Daegu. Rode in a cab -- incident-free, I might add, except for the stopped car we almost rammed into -- back to the neighborhood.
The next two posts will cover the Japan trip. The first entry will cover my visit to the beautiful Nagasaki Peace Park and the informative and incredibly sobering Atomic Bomb museum.
Questions, comments, demands or suggestions can be sent here, or leave a comment on the Mark Fitzhenry's "Korea Blogging!" page here.
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APRIL 22: STRESS, BOREDOM AND MY UPCOMING JAPAN TRIP
Today, for a span of three and a half hours, I taught one student. It's exam time here -- elementary school students have their test later today, and middle and high school students are in a tizzy over their exams that occur over the next two weeks. You really have to be over here to understand the stress levels; the typical student attends school all day, then one or two academies, then studies late into the night before they catch four of five hours of sleep and do it all over again. So, during exam time, the students prioritize by not attending academy. This doesn't mean they're resting; it means they're studying for the exams, which happen once every three months or so.
That backdrop should help explain why I endured an unusually slow day at Yale. Wednesdays are usually reserved for free conversation classes. These are attended by students who either need more practice, or whose parents tell them to show up. We'll play games, or use activities from other books, or, depending on the students, talk about topics such as the government's curfew on students who play computer games. In other words, these days are often optional under normal circumstances, so during a test period they are even more optional.
None of my elementary students showed for my 5 p.m. class. I had one student at 5:50; I taught him comparisons and superlatives, most of the time with soccer as the context ("Barcelona is better than Real Madrid" -- yes, he knew that). At 6:55, my one middle school student did not show; he was on a school field trip at a tea-growing field. And I had my normal break at 7:45. That's one student for four class blocks. I'd tell you how I spent the time, but I'm sure you'd rather do something more exciting, like watch grass growing in Wrexham.
(You thought I was joking, didn't you?)
The day ended on a cool note, however. I finally have a regular adult class. They have a decent vocabulary base. They know a lot of basic nouns, such as things they use or items around the house, but their sentence structure needs work. But they never interrupt and they always listen. They're incredibly diligent. One student even has a children's book and cassette tape in her car, and she has hundreds of vocabulary words typed on paper that fits in her wallet. After class, two of the students invited me for tea at a nearby coffee shop, and despite the rather wide discrepancy in knowing each other's native tongues were able to talk about our families and lives.
My next adventure
I will be spending three days and two nights in Japan. The journey begins tomorrow night with a late bullet train trip to Busan, where I'll spend the night before boarding a 9 a.m. vessel that will take me to Fukuoka, Japan in less than three hours. I'll spend the day there, which, according to most people I've spoken to who would know, is just about right.
The next day I'll take a two-hour bus ride to Nagasaki. I'm heading there for two reasons. One is that a fellow teacher visited nearly two months ago and called it "my new favorite city." The other reason is obvious: As an American, I'd like to check out one of the two cities we decimated with an atomic bomb. Word on the street is that the museums in Nagasaki and Hiroshima are powerful and hopeful at the same time. To prep, I navigated the Nagasaki museum's Web site, which includes three tales from survivors. You can read them by clicking here. I humbly suggest that you don't read these and eat at the same time.
I don't want to end this blog entry on a down note, so I should stress I am just as interested in walking around someplace different, soaking in its streets, its vendors and, well, its street vendors. And its parks and cherry blossoms. Stay tuned.
Questions, comments, demands or suggestions can be sent here, or leave a comment on the Mark Fitzhenry's "Korea Blogging!" page here.
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APRIL 21: DON'T BLINK
It looks like one of the world's most electrifying athletes -- no, not him -- will be gracing my fair city next month. The world's fastest man, Usain Bolt, is scheduled to run his first 100-meter race of 2010 at Daegu Stadium on May 19. Now, in most circumstances, I adhere to the old saying the only thing more boring than track is field. But Bolt is one of the most charismatic and electric athletes in the world right now, and he'll be running a competitive race about a kilometer from my home.
And where will I be? At work, of course. Among the benefits of a job that starts around 3 p.m. each day is the ability to play FIFA on my PlayStation3 all night wake up later than most people. The bad news is, I miss anything of note that happens on a weeknight, such as most baseball games, concerts and international soccer matches that happen during the middle of the week. I honestly don't know if I'll politely ask for the night off, or even if I'd get it, or even if I got it I'd be able to see the meet. I have no idea if South Korea's citizens are ga-ga enough over Bolt to fill all 68,000 seats for a meet that means nothing other than a chance to catch Usain Bolt, who'll be here for the World Championships in 2011 anyway.
The sports fan in me says I should try to see this guy live while he is at his peak. I'll keep you posted.
Questions, comments, demands or suggestions can be sent here, or leave a comment on the Mark Fitzhenry's "Korea Blogging!" page here.
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APRIL 20: SOME MORE BALDYNESS
First of all, before I give you what you really want, I must ask if living in South Korea means I must feel under the weather once every three weeks or so. Last night I had the hardest time falling asleep, and I woke up after one of those fever dreams. I don't know what your fever dreams are like, but mine occur like some complicated plot in a movie that I keep backtracking on, hoping to piece it together from beginning to end, until I just bonk my head on the pillow and hope I just conk back to sleep again -- only last night I was trying to grasp why Baldy was unable to understand whatever grammar concept I struggled to teach him. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I feel like shit again.
But you don't read this blog because of me. You read it because every now and then I talk about Baldy. And this is one of those now-and-thens. Enjoy.
This is Baldy with Cheon Jae Hyeon, who goes by the English name of Richard -- and who continues to happily call me "Michael" every time he sees me. The good news is, someone is actually happy to see me, so I should take what I can get.
(By the way, yes, it is relatively common for Koreans to have English names, because most students adopt an English name for their private school classes. Even some adults pick one up. In one case a few months ago I met a woman in her 20s who went by "Britney." I even have a new adult student who goes by "Annie.")
Baldy is unimpressed by the cherry blossom tree.
"Where's my f**king cookie already?"
My new Canon IXUS 95 IS takes photos in black and white. You may notice that the computer wallpaper is my Facebook profile picture. If you looked like me, and if your dog looked like Baldy, you'd use your dog's photo, too.
Questions, comments, demands or suggestions can be sent here, or leave a comment on the Mark Fitzhenry's "Korea Blogging!" page here.
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APRIL 18: FOR AMUSEMENT PURPOSES ONLY
I will talk about the beautiful Suseong Lake and its family-friendly amusement park in just a second. But if you're going to understand why I'm posting about that today, you first have to understand the mind-set of the majority of foreign teachers, myself included, who come here to teach for a finite amount of time. Teachers who live in Daegu often compile a to-do list that includes visiting Thailand, hopping over to Japan or China, heading to Seoul, hanging out in Busan, hiking in out-of-town venues and touring temples. All of those are worthy pursuits but sometimes we forget to explore the city in which we're living.
That's why, when fellow Siji resident Brian Vance suggested we do something on a Saturday, I thought of things I had yet to do in Daegu. OK, I'm lying. I wanted to go to a baseball game. But with your Samsung Lions out of town, I suggested Suseong Lake:
For a larger version of this photo click The area is a gem, largely because it has something for everyone in any mood. Want to relax? Walk around the lake. Want to get the adrenaline going? Hit the Viking ride. Have kids? Bring them along to ride go-karts or on the merry-go-round. In the mood for a good laugh? Enter the haunted house (although it's worth noting that when the metal floor of one room rattles and shakes, the initial reaction is genuine shock). In a competitive mood? Venture to the basketball shooting game, or the batting cage, or a half-dozen or so other standard amusement park games such as Whack-A-Mole or balloon darts, where you can win kid-friendly prizes such as an adorable little rabbit holding a soju bottle.
Graced with a sunny day, I endured stop-and-stop traffic along the lake in my taxi and met fellow Siji residents Brian, Karen and Andrea, along with fellow Yale teacher Matt.
This is Matt in the batting cage. Notice the tri-colored rectangle in the background. Hitting the green outline is worth 20 points. Hitting the yellow is worth 30. The red target in the middle is worth 50. So, basically, you're rewarded for flying out to right-center, center and left-center field and penalized for line drives up the middle. This particular machine made up for this, however, by being broken, and basically anything we hit turned into points. This explains why I scored 460 and won a prize, which you can see by clicking on the link to my Flickr album later in this blog entry.
After playing more games and collecting more prizes we're going to lose months later when we pack to go home, we chose to ride bumper cars, eat soft-serve ice cream, walk through the aforementioned low-grade haunted house, and finally hit one of the park's highlights, the Viking. Like so many things in South Korea, it's the little things that made the difference, such as:
** The constant backdrop of Korean pop and Lady Gaga playing throughout the ride;
** The ride's announcer acknowledging the "Waygookin" (foreigners) in the back row.
** The Korean woman in the other back row looking into her cell phone to make sure her hair looked good ... before the the ride would send us (and her hair) vertically through the air.
** Going through the ride twice on one ticket. During our rest, the announcer rattled off a quick sentence in his native tongue before he paused and said, "Break time." He either knows some English, or the Korean phrase for break time is "break time," much like the Korean phrase for home run is "home run" and Korean for butter is "butter."
This was the scene Sunday afternoon in Gyeongju, where people flock from throughout South Korea during the oh-so-short window in spring when the cherry blossoms bloom:
I guess the perfect way to soak in the cherry blossoms would have been to take a quiet stroll with as little noise as possible, but viewing the blossoms here is not exactly a little-known secret. I don't have figures to show how many people descended here this weekend, but based on the snarled traffic and the packed buses that I was not the only one who thought walking down this road was a good idea. So off I went with Lizzi, Claire and John, down the busy sidewalk with the vendors selling hard boiled eggs baked inside sweet bread (among other delicacies) and snapping away:
Sunday, I took the cable car to the top of Apsan, the go-to mountain for seeing Daegu from above.
Some quick observations about the day. South Koreans of all ages love coming to Apsan. I saw toddlers and grandparents. I saw men in suits (one of whom said "I love you" as I boarded the cable car on the way down) and women in hiking outfits. All walks of life come here for the view, for the park on the bottom and to picnic anywhere they desire. As for me and my cohorts Geoff and Greg, we planted ourselves at the top and stayed for at least 45 minutes.
Daegu is not exactly the clean air capital of the world, but by the city's standards it was a fairly clear day. Some pics:
I have just opened a Flickr account. For the non-Web savvy (not to mention any names ... Mom), that's a public Web site for people to post photos. Not all of my readers are on Facebook, so I decided to open the account so more people can see my photos. The link to my Apsan album is here.
I must admit, the only reason I had for posting video of this South Korean television ad was the use of one of my favorite '80s songs, "Centerfold," at the end. For the record, if you ever wonder, "What is the first song Fitz ever sung at karaoke?" it's "Centerfold," in New Orleans, with Gainesville Sun reporter John Patton in the buildup to the 1995 Sugar Bowl. So that, along with the fact that "Centerfold" topped the Billboard charts for approximately 77 weeks during my youth, and the bonus that the J. Geils Band is from New England, means there's a special place in my heart for the song, especially the catchy-as-hell hook.
Anyway, I did some research, and the two prominent talkers in the ad are famous in the South Korean film industry. First, the ad:
The man talking about his hair, and apparently comparing himself to Einstein and Beethoven, is Bong Joon-ho, a director and writer. He wrote and directed Mother -- the English-language trailer is here. And the younger fellow in the ad is actor and model Won Bin, who, according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, appeared in an episode of "Friends" in 2002.
So then: two famous Koreans, an '80s classic, and crap beer. What more could you want from your television?
