I'm running out of funny titles...

Again an update 3 days late, hopefully they will get better soon, although I'm defiantly not going to post one tomorrow night. Last day of the seminar. Large group dinner, then party afterwords.

Anyhow the last 3 days have been a blast. We started out going to Waseda University to look at an Urban Design Lab. We heard some presentations and then went to Simo-kitazawa. Its a cool artists place with lots of kind of cheep things. Also a really cool graphic design T-shirt store. It had an awesome shirt that I wanted to buy, but at that point I didn't have any cash. When I came back at night on Thursday I found out they didn't have the shirt in my size. It was Einstein smoking a join and saying “what about relativity” . Pretty amazing if you ask me. Lunch was also great. We had Hiroshima Oyakudonburi. Oishi desu ne.

Next we walked A LOT. It was kind of death. We saw some cool local urban nature projects. A stream that was the equivalent to a small scale chonggeychong. At the end of the stream was a playground with like 20 little Japanese kids playing and their mothers watching. They were so cute. A few of them ran up to us and then ran back. We tried talking, but they were to shy.

It was kind of like the time I scared the living daylights out of this group of Korean kids back in Seoul. I was walking, one of them tried their English thinking that I was out of ear shot, I turned around and he bolted as fast as he could in the opposite direction. His friends just stood there and looked at me sheepishly. It was so cute. Anyway so were these little Japanese kids. One of them said something about not speaking English in Japanese to his friends and then they went back to playing.

Next we met an old coworker of Jeff's Takashida-Sensei(I think). He was this cool old guy. It was really fun seeing Jeff and this guy interact. You got the feeling that these two guys were old friends from back in the day. Also I got the feeling that these guys did some big things together in terms of community organizing back when they were younger. They both sounded so wistful for the old days. Jeff is a really laid back guy, but it was really cool to see him in a group with his peers. Then we had to sit though an hour long presentation by the guy. At that point we were all really hungry from walking all day, everyone slept at one point or another. I even saw Jeff and Naomi (our co-leader) drift off for a bit.

Dinner was interesting. We had some sort of hotpot meal. Some people in the exploration seminar also started to get on my nerves as well, some people were really funny though so it kind of evens out.

The next day we went down to Yokohama. Thats about it. Down to Yokohama saw a nicely designed dock, ate in China town, grabbed some money (finally!) and went over to an old ladies shopping district. All that took until 3:00pm. Thats when the fun started. I hung out with Mathias and his Japanese friend Shigeyo for the rest of the afternoon. We went to this amazing red brick structure that had a great mall inside. I found a really nice sweatshirt to buy, and I really need one of those, but the stupid Japanese clothing industry doesn't believe in making anything larger than an American medium. I would have broken it if I put it on all the way. I'm still adjusting to going to places where you have to pay more than 20$ for a shirt. Its kind of annoying and I'm looking forward to getting back to Seattle and paying reasonable prices for clothes.

Anyhow after that we went back to Simo-kitazawa where I was reaffirmed in the theory that there are no Japanese clothes larger than a medium. We had to leave some late people behind to go to dinner with some more of Mathias' friends. I kind of felt bad, but dinner made up for it. We went to Shibuya station, and found his friends in front of Hachiko. The first two that showed up were Shiho, and Iyako. Two Japanese business women. Then Johnny a very American English teacher showed up. We went out for Shabushabu. An all you can eat hotpot type deal. It was amazing. I've never had so much meat in my life.

As a side note I've noticed that Korea and Japan you often have to cook the meat yourself once you get it. I'm sometimes sketched out by the idea. Especially with Korean BBQ, although it doesn't stop me from eating it because it delicious.

Anyway after that it was just about time for bed. I finished my book, figured out my project for today and went to sleep.

Today kicked my ass. Normally we take breaks with Jeff. I forget to take those breaks. Also it was a lot hotter than the previous few days. The humidity was gone, but I still sweated a bit. It kind of sucked. My first stop was Ueno again. I wanted to go shopping there thinking that was going to be cheep. I knew of a place to get a nice Rage Against the Machine T-shirt, only to find out that it cost 40$. Instead I got my self a nice Japanese Speedo (I needed one anyway) and called it a day.

Next stop was Akihabara again with money! I really shouldn't have brought money. I'll have to show people everything I bought there individually. Its a bit much. I got some nice pictures for my project though and really enjoyed hanging out with all the Otaku. I accidentally ran into some Henti shops. That was an interesting experience. I almost feel compelled to buy some now just to say I have it :).

Ginza was the last stop on my tour for my project. I hate Ginza, and still do. If I ever come back I'm not even going to go to the station. To upper class for me. Anyhow I managed to get my self good and lost before I found the station I was looking to photograph. Then I realized that there wasn't anything under the tracks. I walked a long way, got a feel for the merchants and booked it back to the hostel.

Tonight was taken up designing my project, and I managed to take a Japanese bath. Finally, after a week in Japan. It felt amazing. I wish I knew about the place sooner. Its in our hostel complex. Lesson learned I guess.

Some people didn't like getting naked. I figure go with the cultural norms. A lot of people have been trying to import American culture into Japan and Korea in different forms, or making judgment biased off of American sensibilities. The importing culture thing I think is just stupid. Were not here long enough to really effect any lasting change, and if its not continued then it doesn't really matter. The making judgments aspect is alright, I can see why you would, we have to judge everything some how, but unless you understand the historical reason why someone does something and can see the action through their viewpoint then even if your judging something your not going to really understand it.

Anyhow thats about it from over here. One more half day of seminar than freedom! I doubt I'll be posting much, maybe though. Heres my roughed out schedule.

Sun: Local Tokyo Sights
Mon: Nikko
Tues: Get my JR Rail and head over to the Isu Peninsula. Hike/ do the tourist thing
Weds: Climb Mt. Fuji (Weather permitting)
Thurs: Fuji-ku (a kind of amusement park), Shinkansen to Kyoto
Friday: Go River Rafting, temple seeing and meeting a friends parents to show them around. Then chill with Michael.
Sat: Nara and Osaka maybe
Sun: More temples and hang out with Michael
Mon:Kill my self and get ready for a 20 hour day at least to get home.

It really doesn't feel like I've got a lot of time left :(

Catching up Again

Well the last 3 days have been kind of crazy so I haven't had a chance to update. I got back from clubbing at 4am after walking back from Roppongi. Taxi's here are fricking expensive.

I woke up to go to the Harajyuku area. We walked around looking at the famous subcultures in the park. Including 50 year old Elvis impersonators and some really good bands, then went into the more commercial part the street. This is when my 2 days of awkwardness began. After we got out of the famous alley way (I forget its name right now). We went into the higher class shopping area. We as we made our way through the area I felt progressavely more out of place until finally we got to Omotesando Hills. This is a place where you could buy an under T for 60$. Then it started raining, hard. We took cover in the subway for an early dinner at 5:00.

After dinner I went shopping with Patrick and Will for a few hours. Or actually a better way to say it was I was suffering from sticker shock for a few hours. No store they went into was selling stuff for less than 150$ for a jacket. This is when I realized that I was raised completely differently than these people, and my value system was totally different. Style over substance my ass.

I went home read and slept.

The next day was worse. We went to Shinjyuku which was alright. I saw some cool buildings and an intresting middle class culture. Then we went back to Rippongi, the place where I went clubbing before. I've previously heard that it was kind of a dangerous area from Japanese friends. I only saw it at night and it was definitely more dangerous than other parts of Tokyo, meaning I wouldn't let a girl walk alone at night here, unlike the rest of Tokyo where that is almost acceptable. In the day time it was very different. We went to two development projects, both of which were selling things for more money than I could dream of. I didn't even bother to look at the price tags. I really just couldn't deal with the amount of money that was being spent on useless stuff here. I felt completely and utterly out of place. There was no function only form and I couldn't understand it.

I got out Rippongi asap and tried to get some money out of an ATM to go souvenir shopping. Thats when my night of crisis started. I'll leave it at that and say I'm fairly sure that everything has been taken care of.

Today was much better. We started out in this little shopping street that called yanaka-ginza. It was quant, out of the way and middle class. I felt right at home. I saw a nice yokata there, but because a distinct lack of funds I couldn't buy it. Thats when I realized today might not have been the best day to not have money. Next up was Ueno. Famous for a zoo which we did not see, and a giant ww2 black market under the tracks. Again I saw great engrish shirts, and other things that would have made great gifts. Sadly I'm going to have to go back. The shops were crazy. They were literally right under the tracks. Trains going over head every 3 minutes. Just like out of a Sifi movie. I'd love to come back here at night.

Next up was Akihabara. Also known as electric town or geeks town. This is when I really started crying. I walk into the store and the first thing I see is a Terabyte external hard drive for 230$. Then I walk into this little anime store and see a whole bunch of things from Miyazaki films. It was amazing. I could easily spend a day here shopping. Everyone else can have their nice clothes I'll take this stuff instead.

The day finished up kind of blandly at Shibuya, the busiest station in Tokyo. Its our transfer point to get anywhere else in the city so we've been there a lot of times now. Meh. Tomorrow should be nice. I get to go to a urban planning lab and look around. I'll write more about it tomorrow. Or most likely the next day. The exploration seminar is having another group dinner and those always go late.

12 hour days

are not fun. Today some of us got up at 5:00 to go to the most famous fish Market in Japan, Tsukuji. The action there can only be described as organized chaos, and is best shown in pictures. I saw 1000$ whole Tuna, and tiny eel. I had uni, also know as sea urchin, and almost got run over by trucks multiple times. That was all before 8:00am.

After that I passed out illegally in a subway for an hour while I waited for the seminar to actually start. We started at 9:30, and kept walking for the entire day until 5 in 27-30 degree weather with like 60% humidity. Starting from Tsukiji we basically walked all around the city. I have notes on the names of the places we went to, but basically we saw different streetscapes biased on different development practices.

Lunch was intresting. We had Osaka style okonomiyaki and Tokyo style okonomiyaki. I has a different name, but I forget it now. It was amazingly good though. I'll have to learn how to make it when I get home.

One intresting place we went to was Ginza. I didn't remember going there in 2005, but as soon as I saw the Sony store I realized we had dinner here on the second night. The rest of the district looked completely different though. In part it was because we approached from a different angle, but mostly it was because the district had been redeveloped. I looked for the sifi-scape under the train tracks that I remembered so well last time only to find it completely gone, destroyed by high class boutiques. I looked for the little fake Italian Restaurant we ate at on the second day only to find a plaza where it should have been. It was kind of sad. The Sony building was completely different as well. I was shocked.

After that more walking. We ended up in Shinjyuku and the Love Hotel hill. Anyhow that was about the day. Mostly it was crazy hot out and a lot of walking. I'm really tired and don't remember much else. Time for a nap, then because its Saturday here its time to go out!

I wonder if you know...

Well the first 2 days in Tokyo are almost over. Tomorrow were going to Tsukiji Fish Market at 5:30 in the morning, its 11:00pm here right now so this will be a quick blog. First impressions: My Japanese skills have improved greatly. Not enough to make conversation, but at least I can ask basic questions now. Maybe that comes with growing up. The cost of living here is amazingly high as well. I've already spent over 100$ on basic stuff. Hopefully I'll be stingy later on, but when your spending 10$ on transportation a day at least it might be hard. Can't wait till the JR pass kicks in.

Yesterday was quite interesting. I got into Narita at 2:30, and proceeded to wait for Mung who was the last person to arrive for the next 2 hours. I kept my self busy finding out where he was landing though. It was my first taste of speaking Japanese in the country and man was it hard. I asked the people at the baggage claim if I could have it instead of waiting there. Mung and I took the Narita express train to Shinjyuku station, it was a hour long uneventful ride. I felt like the outlying area of Tokyo developed a little more sence 2005 when I was last here, but thats about it. The group left for dinner 5 min before we got to the Hostel so Mung and I took a crazy cab ride trying to catch up with them. We ended up finding Jeff at a train station and going to the restaurant. Dinner was uneventful. We met our new co-instructor Naomi there though.

Today was the same thing I did on the first day of Tokyo last time I went. Asakusa shrine, and Fuji TV. Nothing really changed, although I got a lot more pictures this time around. Mathais, Jen, Vanessa and I took a round about way home, went grocery shopping and finally made it back to the Yoyogi youth center. Then we went swimming. I'm out of shape. The swimmers here are way better than the ones in Korea. I really wish I brought my Speedo along. Anyhow thats 2 pools I've swam in that Olympians have swam in. This wasn't the Olympic Pool though. Were just staying in the old 1964 Olympic village. After swimming Mathais and I went to grab dinner. We walked into a place that looked good, sat down, read the menu and realized we were in a Korean Japanese restaurant. Kind of funny, kind of annoying, the food was good though so I'm not going to complain. Anyhow thats about it for today. I'm really excited to go to Tsukuji tomorrow.

Catching up

 

Well true to my promise I got a little sidetracked from keeping track of what was going on in Seoul. Starting off from Friday we visited South of the Han river. This place was much more developed than the north that we were staying in, it was also much richer. That picture I've got up there. Its one of the smaller cheep developments south of the river. Cheep meaning that it might cost about a million dollars to live in one of those condos. We went to two other shopping districts as well. Abjugong, and another one that I totally forget the name of now. Its not really important. The excessiveness of those places just amazed me though. I keep thinking I've come across the rich of the rich, only to find richer people and places. Its really hard to imagine.

Friday night me, Matt, and his friend Kenny hit up the clubs in Itewon, the foreign district, actually I should say we hit up the gay clubs in Itewon. That was an interesting introduction to clubbing in general :). I got facebook friended by a gay Korean guy that could barely speak English Very interesting night indead. Oh and not just the night. Seoul stays up until 6-8 in the morning partying. Matt and I called it quits at 5am, and the club we left was still very very full.

The next day I was understandably very tired. I slept in till 2, and wandered out to find food and wandered back. Then it was time for a group dinner. We went to Hungki Unviersity district. Its basically like the ave on crack and not sketchy. There are apparently a lot of clubs in the area, but everyone except for Matt and I had done the night before (We got ditched on Friday due to a miscommunication, well that and drama that I don't want to go into). As a result I ended up going back to Itewon with a different group of people. We ended up at a straight club that I visited the night before called b1. It was interesting I got hit on by a girl from Yeouido (remember the super rich area). One of the girls in our group named Brenda did one better. She some how attracted the attention of this Korean guy who proceeded to take us all out to a Sake bar. The Korean in our group said she trusted him. I wouldn't have gone otherwise. Anyhow we ended up in this Sake bar at 4am with this Korean guy and find out this hes ridiculously loaded. The day before we had talked about second generation money being able to buy houses in places like Yeouido. This guy had a place in Abjugong. Apparently the apartment costs about 20 million dollars and the guy drove a 2 person Mercedes. In the end it got a bit late so we left at 5 again to get to bed.

The next day I woke up late again only to go out to a Filipino Market, and Itewon again... Only this time in the daytime. Thank god. 3 days of parties in a row would not be fun. I promptly went back to sleep after our trip. Woke up to discuss my project with Jeff at 7 and went back to sleep again.

This brings us to Monday. I wake up with a cold, most likely from saying up till 5am 2 nights in a row. To make matters worse I walk outside into heavy rain. The first and only day of rain we've had in Seoul. Well its a good thing my project was on the Subway system of Seoul. Everyones else in my class had problems with their project, but not me. I just couldn't take proper pictures or think effectively :). I was up till 1am putting together a slide show for my presentation on Tuesday.

Tuesday I was still kind of sick. Blowing my noes every hour or so. We went to Seoul National University which had a bigger campus than the UW. I was so surprised. We walked around for a bit, sat though 2 hours of presentations and critiques in a unbearably hot room and left. My presentation went off fine. I pulled out some stuff about Architecture design pattens and I think everyone though I made the presentation way to complicated. That night we had a group dinner with gelato for desert. I wasn't to hungry. I got to bed early.

That brings us to today. I've still got a stuffy nose, but I'm doing much better. Today was a free day so I woke up late to get a bit better and went off to Changgyeonggung. Its a world heritage site, and was very nice. There I ran into this really cool French guy name Peter. He grew up near the same place Kate lived I think. We talked the entire tour and I actually found out he was a Computer Science major. It was really nice to talk about PHP, C, C++, and code stuff again. Even if he was a bit hard to understand. I forgot how much I missed talking about that stuff. We went and got some lunch together. Apparently he was doing an internship in China, and needed to leave for 2 days to refresh his Visa. He'd never been to Seoul so I offered to show him around. We ended up going to the Korean War Memorial near Itewon. That place was an amazing piece of propaganda. Remember Koreans all have to serve 2 years in the military. Pictures speak louder than words in this case. We parted ways fairly late. I went back to Insadong and did some shopping. I picked up a nice hanging scroll for my self, and some presents for friends. I over paid for the scroll, but I don't really care. After that I came back to the hostel and decided to explore to the east. the only direction that I hadn't really gone before. I was a great decision. I snapped some perfect pictures, and really felt like I took in a lot of what old Seoul is all about. It didn't hurt there was some great music playing as I walked. I walked down a bit after I hit a place wall and when I turned around overshot my target. I ended up along Chonggeychong at night. I really wish Seattle had such a nice public space that we could go to at night and feel safe and at home. I'll have to write a blog entry on Chonggeychong alone at some point. Anyhow I got lost there for a bit and found my way back to the hostel after getting 3 Korean doughnuts for 1000 won. The things are amazing. Again another entry soon. Anyhow that basically concludes my stay in Seoul.

The one thing that I didn't mention was cool German and French guys, that and learning languages. I'll leave those notes to my self for later.

My flight is at 12:00 tomorrow afternoon, and I've got to get up at 7:00. The next post will be from Japan!

Streets and People

 

So Korea is a 600 year old city. We are staying in the old district, out in Yeouido where people are right and the city was planned things are different, but here pedestrians rule the streets.

In Insedong the main tourist street next to Hostel there is a small sidewalk with no curb, but some granite blocks to prevent people from cars from leaving the street. In the meantime people easily flow from sidewalk to street without even thinking about it. There are no crosswalks, and cars move at a snails pace. Even more impressive is Dongdemoon where vendors literally take over a 4 lane arterial to sell their goods. The picture your looking at is those vendors on the street. You can see cars trying to get through the shoppers, and failing. Later on we came across a 6 lane arterial that was being used as parking. I think pictures speak louder than words here so I'll just throw this up and call it a night. Tomorrow is a day where I do an independent project so I'll catch up on event blogging, and actually do my presentation.

Merchant Culture In Korea

So just another quick though before it escapes. I've noticed that merchants and markets in Korea have a very different style of selling stuff than they do in America. It looks like in Korea the markets are run by single people. I've never had any scanned by a Korean. Everything is just handed and they tell you the price. Most of the shops we've visited were run by one person. They rarely leave, but when they do they just lock up the shop and walk out. The scale of vending here is much more personal. However the scale of the markets is giant. I walked around Dongdemoon for 2 hours and didn't see half of the market. There were at least 3 other markets that were just a bit smaller as well.

The next in this series of small observations will be the relationship between cars streets and people in Korea.