Blood, rice and noodles

Japan! Take Two: Tokyo - Bright lights, big city

2011-10-17T00:06:00.003+09:00

So, onto part two of our adventures in Tokyo (click here for the first part). On our second day in Japan we foolishly slept in late despite having had an early night the night before.. When we finally made it outside it was seriously hot! We kicked off the day by visiting nearby Ueno Park which was very pretty and home to some giant crows and a shrine as well as several museums although we didn't have time to look round them. We went to Ueno a lot as that was where our nearest major rail station was located and we were using Japan Rail passes to get around, both in Tokyo and for our only big journey, a return trip to Kyoto.

Ueno Park hosts 3 major museums including the National Science museum, a concert hall, several shrines and Ueno Zoo. Unfortunately, we somehow missed most of those things and only made it to one of the shrines. I think this is the entrance to the Ueno Tōshō-gū shrine.

Pretty little stupa in the Ueno Tōshō-gū shrine. A Tōshō-gū shrine is any Shinto shrine that has been dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ieyasu was born in the 1543 and was a warrior and the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate dynasty. He was also responsible for making Tokyo the capital city of Japan.

This is an Ojizo-sama statue. We saw these little red-bibbed figures in the grounds of most of the shrines and temples we visited in Japan. Apparently, Ojizo-sama is a Buddhist deity revered as the guardian of children, particularly those who died before their parents. Grieving parents put bibs, small children's clothing and even sometimes toys on the statues in the hope Ojizo-sama will specially protect their lost loved ones.

The path to the Tōshō-gū shrine is lined with large stone lanterns which were donated by feudal lords.

Another stone "torii" gate on the path to the Tōshō-gū shrine.

Close up of some of the stone lanterns.

These wooden plaques are called "ema". Shinto worshipers write their prayers or wishes on the ema and then leave them hanging at the shrine where the gods can read them.

Detail of some "ema" in Ueno Park.

A statue pf the Imperial Prince Akihito in Ueno Park.

Ueno Park was filled with giant crows like this one.

There were also hoards of huge cicadas in the park and everywhere in Japan in fact. Ueno Park was where I started my Japanese cicada obsession. I took loads of pictures of them and tried to convince Rowan that they were my minions!

Next, we headed over to see Otome Road, which literally translates to "Maiden Road", the supposed home to Tokyo's girl geeks. Otome Road is the nickname for a street in Ikebukuro district near to Ikebukuro Station. This street's nickname derives from a densely packed group of shops selling anime and manga merchandise aimed at women of the female persuasion. There is a similar and much more famous area in Akihabara that caters specifically for manga/anime fans of the male persuasion that we visited later in our journey. Unfortunately, we found "Maiden Road" quite boring. We only saw a couple of comic book shops and it was dead quiet. We even checked the map a few times to make sure we were in the right place but it just turned out there wasn't a whole lot to see - out on the street anyways.

There are several K-BOOKS stores around the Otome Road area. Enough in fact to warrant a map.

K-BOOKS specialise in selling doujinshi and manga aimed at female fans. Doujinshi is the Japanese term for self published works, usualy manga or magazines.

Another K-BOOKS store! We didn't venture inside anywhere as we were short on time and my knowledge on manga, anime etc. is pretty minimal.

This is a sign for a popular Butler Cafe called Swallowtail. This was in fact the first Butler Cafe in Japan. Butler Cafes are a kind of theme restaurant staffed by handsome, well dressed young men who treat the female customers like mistresses in a private home. There are equivalent places for male customers called Maid Cafes. These "Cosplay" (costume play) restaurants are very popular in Japan. Click here to read an account of one woman's visit to this Butler Cafe.

Next, we paid a visit to the Yasukuni-jinja, a Shinto shrine dedicated to the men and women who died while fighting for Japan since 1869. According to Wikipedia it "lists the names of over 2,466,000 enshrined men and women whose lives were dedicated to the service of Imperial Japan, particularly to those killed in wartime." Yasukuni is very controversial, especially in Korea and China, as it enshrines the souls of over 1000 Class-B and C war criminals and at least 14 Class-A war criminals from World War 2. Many of these were executed for their crimes by the Allied Forces after the war's end. Within the shrine, their souls are worshiped as deities rather than just remembered.

The main entrance gate to the Yasakuni shrine. These traditional Japanese gates are called "torii" which means "bird perch" and are usually seen at the entrance to Shinto shrines.

So, when prominent Japanese politicians, including prime minsters, have gone to pay their respects at this shrine with its war criminals, many people in China and Korea get quite upset about it. Which is understandable if you know what the Imperial Japanese regime did in those countries. Many people, both in Asia and around the world, see these visits as support for Japanese nationalism and a tacit denial of Japanese wartime atrocities. It's still a hot issue here in Korea, and numerous Korean groups have tried to file lawsuits demanding that the Japanese government remove the names of war criminals from the shrine. However, the Japanese Government doesn't have the power to do this as only the priesthood of Yasakuni can make decisions about who is or is not enshrined there. It's probably worth mentioning here that the current Emperor of Japan has refused to visit the shrine since he found out that the war criminals had been enshrined there. Anyways, we weren't on a mission to honour the glorious war dead, just to have a look at the shrine and it was impressive, no doubt about that. It also houses one of Japan's very few museums dedicated to the Second World War.

Stone lanterns on the path to the Yasakuni Shrine.

The main prayer hall of the Yasakuni shrine. Yasakuni means "Pacifying the Nation" apparently.

Stone statue in Yasakuni shrine.

Another cheeky looking fellow in the shrine.

A cool metal fish/dragon creature just outside the Yūshūkan museum. The Yūshūkan is war and military museum in the grounds of Yasakuni shrine.

This bronze statue commemorates the 5,843 kamikaze pilots who lost their lives carrying out suicide attacks against the Allies in World War 2.

The museum's A6M Zero Model 52 Fighter Aircraft.

This is steam locomotive model C56 Number 31 which played an important role in Japan's campaign in Thailand. It was used on the Thai-Burma Railroad during the Second World War.

This gun is a 15cm howitzer. It belonged to the First Field Heavy Artillery Regiment who fought a desperate battle trying to defend Okinawa in the last days of World War Two. They fought to the,last man and went down with the gun. Note the damage.

This is a 15 cm Cannon used by the 100th Independent Heavy Artillery Batallion and was also found on Okinawa. It also has numerous deep gouges left by bullets and shrapnel.

Once we'd had our fill of military history at the war museum, we went outside and stopped at a small cafe in the grounds of the shrine where we got an ice cream. This was when Rowan met his new bird!

We were sitting outside at a picnic table eating ice cream to combat the intense heat when a small bird took a shine to Rowan - or perhaps it was to his ice cream!

Eyes on the prize!

Going in for a taste! The bird ate some of Rowan's ice cream. It even sat on his hand for a few moments! Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a photo of that as I'm an idiot.

We also saw loads more cicadas in the grounds of the Yasakuni shrine.

This is the empty outer casing shed by a cicada. You can find these hanging from leaves all over Japan and Korea in the summer.

The cicada casing placed on Rowan's hand to give a sense of how big these things are.

After all the war and ice cream we headed over to Shinjuku, the district that is home to Tokyo's tallest buildings. We made it just in time to go up to the top of the Metropolitan Government Building, right up to the 45th floor! Naturally, we got some amazing views out over the city from all the way up there!

Standing on the 45th Floor of the Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku.

The view from the top.

Tokyo skyline.

More monstrously tall buildings.

This helpful picture was above the windows of the Metropolitan Government Building. It shows what we should have been able to see if it had been a clear day. One of the possible sights included Mt, Fuji.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a clear day so this is what we actually saw, no sign of Mt. Fuji.

Our next stop was Shibuya, a district famed for its fashion, shopping and nightlife. Shibuya is home to Tokyo's busiest train station and to the Shibuya crossing, one of the most famous "pedestrian scramble" crossings in the world. For the uninitiated, a "pedestrian scramble" is a crossing system that "stops all vehicular traffic and allows pedestrians to cross an intersection in every direction, including diagonally, at the same time" (cheers Wikipedia, what would I do without you!) The crossing in Shibuya is famous due to the sheer volume of people using it. When we crossed there, it was like being swept along in a human sea, a strange, unnerving but oddly exhilarating experience (though I expect it gets dull and irritating pretty quickly if you live there). We spent some time just wandering around Shibuya, enjoying the pulsing neon vitality of the place before finding somewhere to have some dinner. We ate some pretty average ramen and drank an expensive but tasty beer with it (drinking out is sooo expensive in Japan, it's enough to turn you tee total)!

The massed crowd waiting to cross Shibuya's "pedestrian scramble".

Inside the pedestrian scramble.

Bright lights of Shibuya.

As we walked out of the station, we were immediately confronted with an awesome spectacle of huge lit up billboards all around us and an unbelievable amount of neon - just the way that you'd always imagined Tokyo would be!

These three young men are from a Korean boy band. Their pictures were on a massive billboard just outside Shibuya station. K-Pop is very popular in Japan, as it is across most of Asia. In fact, K-pop (Korean pop music), Korean dramas and Korean films are popular throughout Asia. This surge in popularity across Asia of Korean pop culture is known as "hallyu" meaning the "Korean wave".

The area around Shibuya Station was a popular place to hang out and pose.

We saw a couple of young guys singing and selling their CDs out on the street in Shibuya.

This was the other half of the singing duo looking cool and nonchalant.

We popped inside a large amusement style arcade that had a casino in the basement to use their toilets.It looked pretty stylish but was devoid of customers. There were loads of people using the gambling machines though.

A romantic date shooting computer generated killer zombies. Ah, how sweet!

Ramen (noodle dish) restaurant in Shibuya.

A rather average bowl of ramen that we ate in Shibuya. It was okay but it didn't really match up to the ramen that we had in Hakata on our first visit to Japan. Not surprising though I guess as Hakata is the home to ramen.

Rowan enjoying a small but tasty (and expensive) beer with his ramen.

Then we headed back to Shibuya to check out the red light district, as you do! It seemed quite sedate and sophisticated for a red light district, just the usual neon signs advertising girly bars and some young guys with ridiculous hair-dos standing outside trying to attract some custom. We took a few pictures then headed home to Asakusa and the hostel bar where we used our drink vouchers to get a couple of beers. It was nice enough in there but far too crowded so we didn't stay long before calling it a night.

Neon signs for DVDs and sexy ladyeez in Shibuya's red light district.

Well dressed, surly young guys with David Bowie circa 1970s hairdos hung around outside the bars in Shibuya's red light district. Not sure what their role was.

Weird billboard for sexy Tank Girls.

More Tank Girls this time with guns.

Woman in traditional garb advertising a restaurant in Shibuya.

Giant plastic King Kong climbing up the side of a building in Shibuya.

Adverts for more crazy hair dos.

Not sure what this place was about. Some kind of sexy house of horrors perhaps?

Sign warning people not to smoke on the streets in Tokyo. Yep, that's right, you're not allowed to smoke outside in Tokyo.

Cool cartoon guy on a billboard.

Plus his gun-toting sidekick.

In the next post, I'll give the lowdown on our visit to Tsukiji Fish Market where we tasted the best sushi we've ever eaten, our wanderings around the Hamarikyu Gardens and our first ride on the high speed Shinkansen train on our way to Kyoto.

Japan! Take Two: Tokyo - Around Asakusa

2011-10-08T01:30:00.004+09:00

Finally, a post about our summer vacation in Japan! I can't believe we're so far behind with the blog - I'm suitably ashamed!

So - Japan: take two. Well, we went to Japan for 5 days in September 2010 for Chuseok (Korea's harvest festival-type holiday) and we fell in love with it!. That time we went to the most southerly Japanese mainland island, Kyushu, and visited various places there including Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Beppu and the active volcano Mount Aso. We discovered that the food was delicious and made with passion, the countryside was beautiful and the Japanese people were friendly and helpful - even the driving was careful and polite, a nice change from the standards on the roads here in Korea. We'd vowed that we would return as soon as we could to see more of this strange and beautiful land and to take in the craziness that is Tokyo.

The beautiful wooden castle at Kumamoto. One of the places we visited on our first trip to Japan back in 2010.

In the second week of August, as soon as Rowan got back from his 2 week bonus vacation back home in England, we headed out to Tokyo for a week of tasty treats and temple spotting in Tokyo and Kyoto. We only took a week for our summer vacation this time (usually we get 2 weeks) as we didn't have enough time before the new semester started due to Rowan's 2 weeks in the UK. Besides, we are definitely not rich enough to spend 2 weeks in Japan, much as we'd love to! So poor old Rowan arrived back in Hanam on Saturday 6 August after a long flight from England via Amsterdam and had to pretty much immediately drop one set of bags and grab another to go back to Incheon airport again. We stayed in our usual favourite motel in Incheon, the Orange Motel so that we were ready in position for our morning flight to Tokyo.

The flight to Tokyo was fine apart from some annoying problems as we were boarding. Unbeknownst to us, the plane was scheduled to carry on to Hawaii after it stopped at Japan making it a USA bound flight. That meant that we were not allowed to bring any liquids onto the plane even though we'd just bought (horribly overpriced) drinks in the departure lounge - Rowan was not at all amused! Korean customer service sucked as usual and consisted of laughing in our faces and not answering our questions - not helpful. Luckily for us the American chief steward had a better way of handling things and we ended up getting a free 2 litre bottle of bucks fizz and another of water - gotta love that American attitude to customer service!

Well, quite!

We arrived in Narita airport and went through the usual fingerprinting and photographing that greets tourists in Japan now. Then we caught the train to Tokyo proper which is an incredible 41 miles away from the airport. When we arrived at our hostel in Asakusa in Tokyo's old town, it was late afternoon and raining. Luckily, our hostel was clean and tidy and had huge amounts of information up on the walls to help visitors make the most of their time. We stayed at one of the Khaosan chain hostels in Tokyo as we'd been really impressed by the Khaosan hostel we'd stayed at in Fukuoka and it didn't disappoint. The private twin room was tiny and had bunk beds but was immaculately clean and pretty cheap compared to most places in Tokyo.

Handy guides on the wall for Khaosan guests to take. They included info on the best way to get to key tourist sights and quick guides with useful Japanese phrases for picking up men or women depending on your preference!

The confusing multi coloured spaghetti of Tokyo's many subway lines.

Instructive signs on the communal toilet in the hostel!

Well meaning though poorly spelt poster reminding people to limit their power usage as this was just 5 months or so after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan and seriously damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant causing power shortages and blackouts.

Once we'd dumped our bags and got our free drink coupons (nice deal from the hostel!), we decided to take a stroll around Asakusa to try to get our bearings. Asakusa is a nice old fashioned district that still retains the atmosphere of a Tokyo of a bygone era. It used to be Tokyo's main entertainment and pleasure district from the 1600s to the early 1900s and had a large red light district and many kabuki theatres. Unfortunately, large parts of Asakusa were destroyed during the bombing raids of World War Two and though some parts of the district were rebiuilt it never regained its former popularity as a pleasure district. Still, it made for a nice stroll and it is an easy area to just explore on foot. Asakusa contains Tokyo's most popular temple, Sensoji, some nice shopping streets and other smaller shrines and temples. As we wandered about the rain even stopped!

The crossing sign man is dressed in a rather old fashioned style in Japan - nice hat!

Young baseball team cycling around Asakusa. Seems baseball is big in Japan too.

Cool looking bus in Asakusa.

Downtown Asakusa. The man in front with the bandanna is wearing weird kangaroo-like rubber shoes with cloven toes to help him with his job - pulling around a pedicab. We saw these guys everywhere.

This is Kaminarimon, the first of two large entrance gates to the Sensoji Temple. The name means "Thunder Gate".

Kimono spotting in the rain!

A terrifyingly bad umbrella - arrrgghhh it's so sickeningly cute!

This is the Nakamise-dori shopping street which stretches from the Kaminarimon gate to the Sensoji temple. There were lots of stalls selling mostly tourist trinkets and snacks.

This is the inner gate leading to the temple. This gate is called Hōzōmon which means "Treasure-House Gate".

The tall pointy building is the pagoda of Sensōji.

Sensoji is a Buddhist temple and was originally built in the 7th century. These buildings are all reconstructions though as the area was heavily bombed during the second world war.

Inside the temple grounds we noticed a strange phenomena that we would see again and again at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples across Japan. This was the traditional practice of buying and consulting "omikuji". "Omikuji " literally means "sacred lottery" and they are random fortunes written on strips of paper that predict good or bad luck for the buyer. They offer one from a possible range of blessings from "great blessing" to "half blessing" to "great curse". Some then go on to list the buyer's fortune concerning love, health, travel etc. There are different ways of receiving "omikuji" including the old fashioned method of simply drawing the slip of paper from a box to the more high tech way of purchasing them form a red vending machine. The method at Senso-ji shrine was a little different.

At the Sensoji shrine, people paid a 100 yen donation then shook a metal box like this one. The box was full of numbered wooden sticks and after some shaking one stick would fall out of a small hole.

Next, the buyer checked the number on the stick and took a paper fortune from the corresponding numbered drawer.

Tying the "omikuji" to a pine tree or a wire is supposed to make good luck come true and avert bad fortune.

After looking at the temple we went on the hunt for some dinner. It took us forever to find somewhere but eventually we settled on a little place where we had some tasty gyoza dumplings.

A coin operated machine where you could choose, order and pay for a bowl of ramen. We passed this place on our first night in Tokyo but we didn't give it a go until some point later during our stay.

A sign for yet another ramen shop in Asakusa.

A weird food substitute (I think) that we saw for sale in a convenience store in Asakusa.

A Pachinko parlour in downtown Asakusa. We saw loads of these all over Tokyo.

Inside the Pachinko parlour. Pachinko is a Japanese game that looks like a vertical pinball machine but has no flippers. It's used for gambling like slot machines in the West and the aim is to capture as many small metal balls as possible. They can be exchanged for prizes or money.

After eating, we headed back to the hostel. Being tired and, in Rowan's case probably a bit jet-lagged still, we decided to have an early night and went to bed. So ended our first day in Tokyo. Click here for the next post about our adventures in Japan which will include an account of our visit to the controversial Yasukuni-jinja shrine, pictures of Rowan's new bird and our hunt for Tokyo's girl geeks in Otome Road.

Boryeong Mud Festival 2011

2011-09-30T22:24:00.006+09:00

Way back, on a humid weekend in late July, I travelled with some of my old mates from Gwangju-si to the Boryeong Mud Festival. The 14th Boryeong Mud Festival was held at Daecheon Beach in Boryeong city in Chungcheongnam-do, a province on the Western coast of Korea.

Map of the provinces of South Korea. It's really quite a small country, about the same size as Portugal or Hungary according to Wikipedia.

This is probably the most popular summer festival in Korea and it seems to be virtually compulsory for all foreigners to attend at least once during their stay. It's popular with domestic tourists too and is one of the only places where I have ever seen large numbers of Korean women/girls wearing bikinis or with their shoulders shown at all in fact (in Korea women/girls wear ridiculously short shorts, so short sometimes that you can see their pockets sticking out from under the leg of their shorts but it is culturally taboo for women to show their shoulders or any cleavage - just too sexy I guess!)

Korean female shoulders - OMG!!!!

The basic premise of the festival is mud. Lots of glorious, grey, sticky mud. You wrestle in it, paint yourself with it, make soap out of it and generally have a good time getting filthy. Also, I think it's supposed to improve the condition of your skin but I don't think most visitors really cared about that aspect of it! The area where the festival is held is famous for its abundance of mud and there is a fair sized local industry built up around the cosmetic benefits of it. In fact, according to Wikipedia the festival was "originally conceived as a marketing vehicle for Boryeong mud cosmetics". Funnily enough though, Daecheon beach, where the festival actually takes place is a sand beach and doesn't have any of its own mud. The local authorities have to truck in tons of the grey stuff from the nearby Boryeong mud flats to use in the 'Mud Experience Land' on Daecheon's seafront.

Boryeong Mud Festival is all about getting dirty! It's good for your health after all!

The festival was held over two weekends in July. We attended the second weekend on 23 July and we went with Adventure Korea, a tour group that specialises in arranging trips for foreigners in Korea. On a quick side note, I've been on a couple of Adventure Korea's trips now and they're always well organised and fun so if you're a fellow waygook in Korea looking for something to do at the weekend check them out here.

At the time of the festival I was midway through my 2 weeks of summer camp and Rowan was getting ready to head back to England for his 2 weeks of "bonus" vacation. If you're unfortunate enough to know us or read this blog regularly (I'm sorry!) then you might remember that he got those extra 2 weeks for renewing his contract at the same school. I was, of course, not feeling at all embittered about losing my bonus vacation due to being forced to change schools because of the funding cuts. Oh no, not me. The trip to the mudfest was on the first weekend that I was to be without Rowan so it was a way to ease the pain of separation - oh the agony!

As is often the case with any Adventure Korea trip, we had to meet up really early in the morning at the Express Bus Terminal station in Seoul which is a pain for us folks who live out in the 'burbs. Rowan and I decided to spend out last night together in a fancy love motel in Seoul to lessen the pain of the early morning for me and to make it easier for him to get to the airport. The motel was cool, it had the best shower ever, a huge flatscreen TV and a jacuzzi, though sadly we couldn't figure out how to get the jacuzzi to work.

Giant TV!

Jacuzzi (that didn't work) .

After a super comfortable night in our pricey love motel, we said our goodbyes and I made my way to the Express Bus Terminal subway station. I didn't know it at the time, but that subway station is huge and has loads of exits so despite arriving with a few minutes to spare I still ended up jogging around the labyrinthine station trying to find the right exit - not a good start! I met my friends on the bus who were all bleary eyed from an evilly early start leaving Gwangju-si at some unearthly hour to get to Seoul in time. Finally we were off. It took a couple of hours or so to get to Boryeong. To make things more "fun" Adventure Korea took us to the mud flats for our first stop before we even got to Daecheon Beach for the festival. The "fun" thing that we were all ordered to do was a mud marathon and there were no excuses for non-participation! I remember standing there wailing that I hadn't signed up for this and couldn't I just watch - no chance!

Everybody did the marathon in the end whether they wanted to or not! This is the course stretching out into the distance. Note it's not a real "marathon" distance though, only 5km!

Numbered and ready for the mud!

The motley Gwangju-si crew with their racing numbers on.

We had to wear socks due to sharp stones and shells in the mud but someone still managed to slice their foot open.

Me and Jen heading up the runners - the group of runners lagging behind at the back though, not the entire race of course!

It was really hard work jogging through the cloying mud but it was fun.It looks overcast here but it was actually hot and humid - just another typical Korean summer day.

There were various inflatable obstacles that we had to navigate during the marathon course. I got over this one no probs.

And this one too.

But I got bounced out of the last obstacle by our friend Leif, who jumped on the inflatable wall as I was climbing over it. I landed face first in the mud and even managed to get mud on my teeth! You can see the offending red and yellow obstacle in the back ground here.

Everyone got a medal for taking part in the mud race.

On the reverse side of the medal there is an inscription that reads "For better your life" - love Korean English!

After the marathon we changed into old army clothes. Then we were split into groups and played some silly team games including football (soccer), mud wrestling and chicken fighting.

Jen and Amy in the mud wrestling ring. They were brutal fighters! The girls' bouts were much more vicious than the boys ones!

Jen taking a girl down in the wrestling ring!

More wrestling, this time with a girl from each time being lifted up onto some guys' shoulders for the fight.

My team (on the right) preparing for the chicken fight. A chicken fight is hop on one leg and try to knock your opponents over without putting your foot down or falling yourself.

(Photo care of Adventure Korea website)

After all the team games were finished, we washed off the worst of the mud using a hose at the back of a big water truck, grabbed a beer and jumped back on the bus to the Mud Festival. Once we arrived we were assigned our guest house for the one night that we would be staying in Boryeong. They were big Korean style rooms with no beds, just blankets for sleeping on the floor. As we were a big group we had a whole big room to ourselves which was cool. Then it was our "free time" to go enjoy the festival. We had a look at the festival and then headed down to the beach to drink, swim and play in the sand.

Muddy faced mascots of the Boryeong Mud Festival.

There was a fenced off Mud Experience area on the sea front that you had to pay to enter. It had a few mud slides but we didn't bother cos we were too tight to pay!

The paying area also had a mud prison - not to sure what went on there but it sounded scary! (care of Adventure Korea website)

People in the Mud Experience area crawling through what looks like some kind of inflatable udder tunnel.

There was an area where you could go and paint yourself, for free, with the health giving mud. I chickened out as I didn't want to risk trashing my camera - boring of me I know.

Identify the body part from the mud print.

The Gwangju-si mob fully muddied up and armed with a rubber ring.

And again, closer.

There was also coloured mud available for the more artistically minded.

We left the mud sliding to the more sporting type and entertained ourselves drinking deadly cocktails in a bag on the beach.

And burying Stephanie.

And playing with the rubber ring. Man, I love playing with rubber rings in the sea, a joy I only discovered here in Korea!

As usual Leif got all artistic and made a cool sand sculpture to hold his drink.

As you can imagine, people got totalled a bit early so by the time we went looking for dinner some people were a bit worse for wear! Some people went off to have seafood barbeque. I went with the non seafood crowd to a Korean restaurant and had my first taste of budae jjigae (literally "army base stew"), a thick soup made with spam, veggies and hot dog sausages that's actually really tasty.

Buddae jjigae or "army stew" originated during the Korean War when food was scarce. Hungry Korean citizens would use the surplus US army foods such as spam and hot dog sausages and boil them up in a spicy broth with kimchi and red pepper paste.

We had a few drinks by the beach that night and watched people letting off their handheld fireworks, a popular way to dice with death/disfigurement here. We ended up having a fairly early night as everyone was so knackered from the early start. It was raining the next morning so we had a bit of a late start. We trekked across town for ages trying to foind the local Lotteria, Korea's answer to McDonalds. I had my usual - the mighty European Frico Cheese Burger - it was awesome! Then the rain soon stopped and once the sun came out it turned into a real scorcher of a day. We spent our last day in Boryeong browsing the little stalls at the festival, making mud soap and enjoying the sunshine.

Pottery made out of mud.

Mud soap stall.

David making his own soap.

The moulds we made our mud soaps in. We had to choose a design and a scent for our soap.

Stephanie with her soap - she chose the same design as me!

And of course we had a samul nori performance too on the last day! Every Korean festival has to have one.

They even let the muddy foreigners have a bash!

This guy got really into it!

And the crowd of Korean amateur photographers loved him!

Many people decided to carry on getting muddy but we decided to try to stay clean on the second day. Would have got some funny looks on the subway covered in green mud!

Sadly, all good things have to come to an end. We got taken by bus back to Seoul in the afternoon and I said goodbye to my friends and went home to an empty apartment - boo hoo for me! It was strange. I had to cook for myself. After week 2 of summer camp was over, I had a week of deskwarming to do which meant seeing nobody all day for days on end. But I grew to quite enjoy the hermit lifestyle. That's not to say I wasn't happy when Rowan finally came back, armed with goodies from home. We didn't have much time to enjoy them though as we were going away on vacation the same day he got back. Next stop - Japan!

English Summer Camp 2011

2011-09-25T22:08:00.006+09:00

Way back, in the last 2 weeks of July, it was hot and humid and raining lots which meant:

a) that it was another sticky Korean summer

b) I was spending all my free time researching what we would do on our holiday

c) it was time for another English "Camp".

Yes, it was English Summer Camp 2011 and my first camp at my new middle school in Hanam. In fact, this was our third English camp in South Korea and we were starting to feel like old hands at it by then I think. (To read about our previous English camps or to have a look at our old materials, click here for Summer 2010 and Winter 2010). In common with "camps" at both my previous school and Rowan's school and in fact most (if not all schools) in Korea, there wasn't a scrap of canvas in sight and certainly no camp fire as camps here just mean an extra curricular program which the kids attend during the holidays.

It's the end of the road for canvas fans.

My top 2 rules for English camp. Especially no fires.

The set up for camp was a bit different at my new school. There used to be two native speaker English teachers at my school but due to the funding cuts I am the only one there now. This meant that, in the past, there were two English camps run at the same time, each lasting for two weeks. One camp was for the 1st graders (13-14 year olds) and the other was for 2nd graders (14-15 year olds) and each camp was supposed to have around 20 kids in it, though of course you always get a few who don't turn up. Now that I was all alone (sob) camp had to be a bit different. I was actually quite lucky for once.

At first there was talk of putting the 1st and 2nd graders together in one group but it was decided that this was actually a stupid idea as students in Korea really don't mix well with kids who are not from the same school year as them (age is VERY important here as it denotes how much respect you get - or not as the case may be - thanks a lot Confucius!) and the idea of working with someone a few months younger seems totally alien / impossible to them. This was excellent news for me as it meant that I had to teach two separate camps, one for each age group, and as I only have to teach camp for 2 weeks it was arranged that I would teach one week of 1st and 1 week of 2nd grade, This meant I could repeat my materials so I only had to come up with 5 days of organised fun - assah! (앗싸 - Korean exclamation like "yay" or "awesome" or something similar).

앗싸! Sophie Teacher was so happy at the lighter workload that she dyed her hair blue and started seeing stars!

Another positive of at my new school was that there was a much bigger budget for camp which meant more food and materials and even a trip out to the cinema for the 2nd graders and to the local bowling alley for the 1st graders. My previous school always had a tiny camp budget, certainly not enough to do any trips out of school. On the negative side though, the group sizes of camps at my new school was considerably bigger (up to 20 kids per camp) as the Principal wanted to stuff as many in as possible to make the school's commitment to English look good on paper. This made it harder for me to control and give individual students much attention and meant that instead of getting the good, enthusiastic students with half decent English who actually wanted to be there I got loads of naughty, soccer obsessed boys who had been press ganged into attending and just wanted to eat snacks, go on the trip and speak as little English as possible. Not so cool.

My classroom at my new school in Hanam. Set up ready for camp. The calm before the storm!

As the camp was so short I decided not to theme it this time as I had at my previous school but to just do different stuff each day. The problem with teaching at a co-ed school is that girls and boys generally like wildly different things by the time they get to middle school so it's quite tough doing things that will appeal to all the students. My answer was to mix and match the activities, some aimed more at the boys, others at the girls but to try not make any too gender specific. Sometimes I think Rowan is lucky only teaching boys, it makes it easier to use material that will get most of the kids' attention. As before, Rowan and I tried to share some material to cut down on the planning workload. I think he did a Space themed camp this time with lots of stuff about the solar system and planets but we worked together on some stuff.

I taught my 1st grade camp first (easier for me to remember). As usual, Day 1 kicked off with introductions, setting out the camp rules such as "Don't be late", "No fighting" and "Try to speak in English not Korean" (ha ha - as if they're ever followed!), dividing the kids into teams, getting them to choose English names and playing some warm up games to get the students used to each other (as they are drawn from every class in their year they won't all know each other well). At my new school they have a badge machine so we made name badges to which was quite fun.

I let the students pick their own team names which often results in rather dull, unimaginative names. However, team 3 picked a rather unfortunate one and I didn't pick up on it until it was too late - whoops, bad teacher!

Team 1 - The Pepsi team. Mainly comprised of soccer obsessed boys who were hard work to control but their English wasn't too bad and their team work was amazing.

Team 2 - Sophie's students - sucking up never hurt anyone!

Team 3 - the unfortunately titled School Killers - I still feel bad about that name but they were nice boys.

Students in my 1st grade camp playing a warm up game that is a mixture of an egg and spoon relay race and CONSTANTINOPLE.

The teams have to race with their "egg" (a ping pong ball) on a spoon to the board and write one word beginning with each letter of CONSTANTINOPLE. One student writes a word then races back for the next one to have a go. Fun but causes total chaos and abundant cheating of course!

I think Day 1 is always the hardest to teach as the kids are not used to each other yet and don't know what to expect from the teacher so the atmosphere can be quite stilted. Rowan and I have tried various ways of tackling this but nothing has worked 100% yet. Maybe there's amagic ice breaker game out there that I'm unaware of that would solve all my problems - answers on a postcard to...

Anyway, this time we tried to get over this problem by having more games and less worksheets on Day 1 but it still didn't quite work. Maybe the games weren't right, maybe the mix of students wasn't the best. Actually, in my 1st grade camp, I had the worst ever Day 1 yet. One boy was getting bullied by some other boys. When I challenged them, their excuse was that he was "dirty". They explained it to me like I was being stupid for not realising this. I was suitably unimpressed and warned the culprits in no uncertain terms but it wasn't the best start to camp. Like I say, it's hard to control a group of 15 - 20 kids in a language which is foreign to them and enforcing hard-line discipline and breaking up fights (yes, it started descending to a physical fight at one point) is no fun at all.

The first rule of English Camp is: You do not talk about English Camp.

Day 2 was a better day. I got one of my co-teacher's to have a word with the main bullies in Korean to make sure they understood that they could not behave like that again or they would be sent home and that seemed to help. Day 2 was all about the Egg Drop Challenge and T-shirt painting. Predictably the boys were more into the egg drop and the girl's were more excited about painting t-shirts but it was generally a good balanced day.

Materials set out for the Egg Drop Challenge. For the uninitiated, the Egg Drop Challenge is a popular science project in schools around the world. The idea is that each team must build a structure to hold their egg out of limited materials and then all the structures are dropped form increasing heights. Last team with an intact egg wins.

The egg-stremely brave little pilots, unsung heroes of the Egg Drop Challenge.

Each of the teams made quite different structures. I gave them a limited amount of materials that included balloons, string, a plastic bag, some cardboard, paper, wooden chopsticks, toilet roll tubes and rubber bands.

The soccer obsessed boys team really got into this challenge and worked extremely well together.

They made a cool structure reminiscent of a box kite frame with the egg suspended in the toilet roll tube using rubber bands to hold it in place.

And then they added a plastic bag on top to act as a kind of parachute.

The girls' structure was a flimsier affair made out of chopsticks bound together with rubber bands.

The other boys' team made a kind of weird balloon parcel around their egg.

An egg-stronaut nervously awaits its maiden voyage.

The Pepsi team preparing to launch their structure on the first drop.

The girls' launch their egg on drop 1.

Team 3 dropping their egg structure. Drop 1 was very short and everyone survived it easily.

Drop 2 was a little higher but still everyone survived it easily.

I think this was the last drop. We threw the structures out of the windows of the boys' toilets on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors.

Game over!

I think everybody's structures failed when dropped from the 4th Floor.

After the last test landing, the egg-straunauts were left as nothing but empty shells. They finally cracked under the pressure.

After the egg drop challenge, we got down to some t-shirt painting.

The dinosaur design was my favourite.

The soccer obsessed boys made boring attempts at copying their favourite sports shirts.

This was when things started to go wrong! and get messy!

Oh dear!

Painty handprints everywhere!

The design looked quite cool at first but the kids couldn't stop and it turned a bit muddy!

There were a few Jackson Pollack style designs too!

As usual we had a cooking day and this time we cooked pancakes. The 1st graders really enjoyed cooking and were all pretty good at it too. Several kids flipped the pancakes and I don't think any got dropped. Even better, the boys and the girls seemed to be equally enthusiastic about it!

Mixing it up.

Cookin'.

Splashing on the pancake syrup.

The students ate their pancakes with chopsticks of course.

As usual there were a few kids who went condiment crazy with the pancake syrup.

Day 4 was trip day and we went bowling in Hanam. My co-teacher Sunny came along to help too. It was a scorching hot day and we tried our best to keep to the shade as we made the 20 minute walk across town to the bowling alley. We pretty much just let the kids get on with it and play together. Sunny and I played a few matches together. I managed to impress my soccer obsessed boys with my (purely lucky) prowess with a bowling ball - I was on fire that day! I'm not sure what the educational value was of taking the kids bowling but they enjoyed it and we learnt the key vocabulary for it the day before so whatever I guess, it wasn't my idea, just something my school does.

This little chap always makes me laugh, he's quite precocious and has excellent English. I always think of him as the "Spongebob student" as he has a Spongebob pencil case and similar glasses.

'Spongebob getting some advice pre-throw.

Action pose #1.

Action pose #2 - think he let go too early.

Sunny gets another gutter ball.

Me throwing straight down the centre again - woohoo!

Stopped in the nick of time!

Assah!

As always, the last day was used for camp review and to play a few last games. I also ran a kind of scavenger hunt too in which the teams had to run around the school taking photos of things on their cell phone s, drawing picture and fulfilling other random challenges including singing me a song in English. I got the usual Beatles songs sung to me with varying degrees of embarrassment and gusto. I like the scavenger hunt part of the day, it gets the kids active and they always enjoy a chance to use their phones. We rounded off the 1st grade camp with a 'pizza party' - basically the kids stuff their faces with pizza and drink coke. Again not sure what the educational value of that is but it was a fun way to end things I guess.

One of the scavenger hunt challenges was to draw a picture of an elephant riding a bicycle.

Pizza party time.

So the following week I had to repeat the whole thing again but with the 2nd graders this time. The group size was a lot smaller this time so it was much more manageable. 2nd graders tend to be lazier and harder to engage so they presented a different challenge to the rowdy, hyperactive 1st graders. I think I only had boys turn up for the 2nd grader camp which made it easier in a way as they were all interested in the same kind of stuff.

We played games on Day 1 just as we had in the 1st grade camp.

Possibly a bit of cheating going on here in the egg and spoon race!

The boys made badges with their team names and English names. One team was called Billy's Kingdom which seemed to be the source of much hilarity though I'm not sure why. Possibly it was because they'd seen the film Billy Elliot at some point and associated the name with a lack of manliness of something?

A cheeky lad with the English name of William who also comes to my after school class.

We had the egg drop challenge on Day 2.

As there were so few students on Day 2 and they were pretty well behaved, I decided to make my own structure out of polystyrene sheets, toilet roll tubes, chopsticks, tape, string and a plastic bag for a parachute.

The students made heavy use of the balloons as usual. They seemed to think that tying loads of balloons filled with aior would somehow make their structure fly - bless 'em!

Me dropping my trusty structure from the first drop.

The balloon boys at one of the higher drops.

My structure looked cool but it was rubbish and was the first to break - all style no substance!

Balloon boys at the final drop form the top floor window.

Th victorious balloon boys with their intact egg.

And holding up their winners' chocolate bars.

After the egg drop, the boys painted t-shirts. It was a lot more orderly and easier to clean up than the 1st graders' session had been.

On Day 3 disaster struck. It started raining heavily and didn't stop. There were serious floods all over South Korea that caused several deaths, including 3 people who died in flooding in our old hometown of Gwangju-si when the local river burst its banks. The river didn't qite overflow in Hanam but it wasn't far off.

This is the small stream that runs behind our apartment in Hanam, taken in June 2011.

This is that same 'stream' in July on the 3rd day of my 2nd grade camp during the incredibly heavy rains that claimed at least 38 lives due to flash flooding and landslides.

The same scene a few hours later once the water level had dropped away. Note the flattened grass.

Umbrellas offered no real protection as the rain was coming down so hard it just bounced up onto your legs again.

Some schools cancelled their summer camps but not mine of course!

When I arrived at school drenched and chilled to the bone I found that water was pouring in through gaps where the windows didn't close properly - onto all the computer stuff.

I tried to sto the flow with old towels but quickly ran out and had to just drag everything away from the window.

The few brave students who actually turned up to school for camp and for other extra classes were drafted into bailing water out of the gym.

The whole school was leaking. It's a relatively old building by Korean standards and it continued to leak throughout the rainy season.

Days later there were still diggers moving all the mud off the pavements by the side of the stream.

All this rain didn't get me out of having to teach camp for the day though. Neither did the fact that I only had 2 kids turn up. When they were released from mopping up duties we tried to do some cooking but the gas supply to the kitchen seemed to have been lost somehow in all the flooding so we gave up and watched Die Hard 2 instead. This was possibly a mistake as I had forgotten how much swearing there was in that movie and my Korean co-teacher looked a little shocked when he walked in to be greeted by a hail of f@#k you's from the screen - oh well.

On Day 4 we headed out to the cinema to watch the final installment of the Harry Potter movies along with about half the teachers in the school it seemed who were all more than happy to get free tickets to come care of the school. Not sure why they all got tickets or why my co-teacher was able to bring his kids along for free too - the way my school usually react when I ever ask forf anything had led me to believe that it was strapped for cash! Like the time when I asked if they would replace the ink cartridge in the English room printer and they said no but I could buy a new one myself if I wanted to - cheers guys!

We wrapped up on Day 5 with party games and a scavenger hunt just like with the 1st graders and the 2nd grade boys even shared their pizza with me - they can be kind sometimes!

At the end of week 1 of summer camp, Rowan went home for his 2 weeks of bonus vacation that he received because he renewed his contract with the same school. As I had been forced to change schools due to the funding cuts I was stuck in Korea all on my lonesome ownsome. I soon got used to it though and became a bit of a hermit. He was away for my second week of camp and my first week of deskwarming. I grew to quite like it though I think I may have started talking to myself sometime during the week of deskwarming but that's nothing new with me!

Overall I think summer camp 2011 went well despite some serious teething problems with the 1st grade camp on day 1. The egg drop was fun and going out on trips really got the students excited too even if they didn't learn much English from it!

White Water Rafting

2011-09-20T22:15:00.003+09:00

Did you know that July 1 is Canada Day? No, me neither. But living and working in Korea has taught me many things about other cultures and not just Korean culture. Our Canadian friends enlightened us about this day that commemorates the birth of their fine nation and it was decided that we should do something fun to celebrate.

I'm so ignorant of Canadian culture. Look, even these young kids knew when Canada Day was.

Our super organised friend Jen (who also happens to be a Canadian citizen/expert) arranged, with the help of her extremely obliging Korean co-teacher, Miyoung, for us all to go white water rafting for the weekend. They booked rooms at a pension house out in the wilds of northern Gyeonggi province, up near the border with North Korea, at a place called Gwanin, a rural district of Pocheon city. Jen warned us to "bring some drinking supplies" as she wasn't sure if they would have a convenience store out there "in the country". She was right, it was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains, trees and with a large river (I think it was the Hantan) running close by for us to raft on.

Pocheon City is in Northern Gyeonggi province, on the border with North Korea. (photo from Worknplay Consulting website)

Just in case I'd forgotten that we live in a country that is technically still at war - I was looking for pictures of Pocheon and this one was pretty high up the list - it shows a Korean artillery live fire exercise on Pocheon mountain from Dec 2010. It seems Pocheon is a popular place for the Korean and US armies to practice their moves.

We got up early in the morning on Saturday and swapped Hanam for the noisy, crowded Gangbyeon Bus Terminal in East Seoul where we met our friends coming from Gwangju-si in time to catch the 10am bus to Pocheon. The bus took nearly two hours and followed a rather meandering route out into ever smaller towns and villages. When we arrived in Gwanin we were herded into a minivan and driven at breakneck speed (is there any other speed in Korea?) to our pension house. Having survived that journey, I was sure that the rafting would be a walk in the park in comparison. I think I might have even shouted at the driver in Korean to slow down and/or possibly sworn at him. Bad Sophie, but I hate other people gambling with my life and those of my friends because they want to get off for a cigarette break or whatever. Losers. Anyway, the pension house was lovely, a white painted, two storey affair with a balcony out front which later became the haunt of the smokers once the after rafting drinking got started.

Our pension house near the river. It looks overcast but don't be fooled, it wasn't cold. It was a hot, humid Korean summer day and overcast and hazy is the default summer sky setting here!

After eating some snacks and setting our bags down, we all got changed into some rafting appropriate clothes i.e. stuff that would dry fast and then headed outside. We were driven by minivan (not so terrifyingly fast this time) to the place where they keep the rafting equipment and we all got kitted out in helmets and life jackets and we each got given a metal paddle. Then it was back on the bus for the short hop down to the river.

Us looking awesome in our rafting gear!

On the bus going to the river. Those metal paddles were lethal in that confined space! It was like the first test of our rafting skills.

Little did they know that this trip would change all their lives in ways they'd never imagined possible....this season's blockbuster, "Without a Paddle" going straight to DVD at a Blockbusters near you.

We arrived at the river and were greeted by our cheerful Korean guide who happily explained that we should be careful as the river was more dangerous than usual as it was swollen by the recent heavy rains. Of course we weren't fazed by this at all cos we're all so hardcore. Well, maybe one or two people got a bit nervous but no pain no gain. Our group wasn't the only one rafting that day. There were a few others, all Korean I think, and we all started at the same point on the river.

Inflatable rafts on the more "dangerous" than usual Hantan River.

We all climbed aboard our blue inflatable raft and were given a very brief safety talk that mainly consisted of "try not to fall out of the raft", "keep you feet in the loops on the floor of the raft so you don't fall out" and "keep paddling" when told to so we don't capsize and then off we went. It was a bit strange at first getting used to the balance of the raft and how to paddle properly but the instructor guy seemed to know what he was doing and soon got us working like a machine! He assigned number 1 to one side and 2 to the other and called out the appropriate number when he wanted that side to paddle. Hey, we got so good at it, he even called the numbers out in Korean to us sometimes and we still got it right - good job!

Heading out on the rather crowded river.

We got soaked and had a great time! Note our grinning Korean guide giving it the peace (or "Kimchi") sign at the back.

The white water wasn't really that scary, despite the guide's warning but it was still really fun and pretty exhilarating when we crashed through the larger swells. The guide would shout at us toi keep paddling as we got closer and everyone braced themselves as a wall of white spray flew up into our faces. There was a moment when you couldn't see what was going on, you just kept clinging to the boat with your foot in the loop and paddling for dear life - it was great! Everybody managed to stay on board throughout the trip and we actually travelled through some really pretty countryside too.

The river ran through a thickly wooded valley.

There were strange rock formations in the cliffs at the side of the river.

The rock cliffs were very steep at some points along the journey and I'm sure I remember the guide saying that there were bats living in them.

We took a brief break half way through the course which made for a nice photo opp. All the watery photos on here are care of Leif's waterproof camera - cheers Leif!

The raft guides encouraged their motley crews to attack the other vessels by splashing them lots - that's what the paddles were really for!

I'm not sure how long the actual rafting went on for, maybe just under 2 hours. Once we'd completed the course, we had to haul the raft out and onto the shore. We handed our gear over, got a shower and then it was the bus back to the pension for an all you can eat meat and veggies dinner accompanied buy some free booze - winning!

They gave us some free beer and soju to wash the food down with. How thoughtful of the pension owner!

This was Leif's third year of living in Korea. Here he displays his mastery of the complicated chopstick paper cup soju drinking manoeuvre.

As darkness descended, Rowan and I began to lose control of our photographic outlines.

It got dark as we were eating and with darkness comes mozzies and other biting things so we headed indoors to enjoy our pension rooms and drinking supplies. Rowan managed to befriend a group of Korean lads staying in one of the other rooms and they ended up hanging out with us for the evening.

Partying in the pension room. It was a Korean style room which meant no beds, just blankets on the floor.

Our new Korean friends.

Possibly acting out some part of a musical or K-Pop song perhaps!

Cultural exchange is always easier with a little liquid lubrication!

Overall, it was a fun night but a rather painful morning for some! We all got a lift back to to the main bus stop in one of the pension minibuses and then it was an intercity bus back to Seoul. A good weekend and a fun way to celebrate Canada Day!

Leaving on a Bongo Truck

2011-09-09T23:07:00.003+09:00

Following the end of Sophie's job in Gwangju-si, we had to leave behind our lovely apartment and move to our new place in Hanam. Despite having come to Korea with only two suitcases full of stuff we managed to collect a whole lot of stuff. Two of my co-teachers, the head of the English department and the boss of my office came along to help us move in their cars. After looking at our massive piles of stuff they quickly decided that there wasn't enough room in their cars so called for a man with a small "Bongo" truck to come and help move our stuff. It was quite an ordeal getting everything into the lift and loaded on to the truck, what with our new neighbors' pesky son trying to steal the stuff he took a shine to whenever we weren't looking and other neighbors just standing around having a stare at the foreigners and blocking the hallway in the process.

For the uninitiated, this is the ubiquitous Kia Bongo truck, a small 1 ton truck that you see everywhere in South Korea, often piled high with garlic or melons or some other fresh produce and driven round by an ajjoshi (Korean older man) with a recorded sales message blaring out of the onboard PA system.

We eventually got everything loaded and were ready to roll. Unfortunately, when we gave my teachers the address for our new apartment we discovered that there was a problem. The guy at Sophie's new school had only given us part of the address so we wouldn't be able to find it. Not a good start to the journey! We tried to contact the guy a few times but without much success. So there was nothing we could do but just head into Hanam and try to work it out as we went along. We jumped in the car with my teachers and the Bongo truck guy trundled off ahead of us.

We arrived in Hanam fairly quickly as it's only 12 miles from Gwangju-si. We then spent another hour or two just circling around trying to work out where the hell we were supposed to be going. My teachers were continually trying to call this guy at Sophie's school to find out where our new place was. In the end, when my teachers did get a hold of him he said he didn't know exactly where the apartment was because he'd never been there and he was busy and at home now so he couldn't find the address for us! It later turned out that this was the first in a long line of lies that we'd be told by this bloke but anyway we didn't know that then.

I don't really understand how we found the apartment in the end but we did. There was a lot of talking in Korean between my teachers and the guy form Sophie's school and the Bongo truck driver and somehow we got there but it had been a needlessly long and exhausting trip and I felt so bad about my teachers spending so much of their Friday evening helping us. They did it out of kindness not because they had to and it was lucky for us that they did help or we would never have found the place! The lovely woman who is the boss of my office then paid some local high school boys she saw on the street to help us carry all our stuff up to our 3rd floor apartment which was great! She then took us all for dinner at a nice restaurant on the edge of Seoul and insisted on paying and took us back to her beautiful apartment to show us her place. Luxurious would be the best word to describe her place!

We headed back to our place in Gwangju that night and stayed there for the rest of the weekend so we could hang out with our Canadian neighbors for a last time and enjoy being in a nice big apartment while we still could! We made a few return trips to Hanam by bus to take a few things that hadn't fitted onto the Bongo truck (I really don't know how we have accumulated so much crap!) and then properly moved in the day after Sophie finished at her school, midweek I think.

That's when the real fun started... (pictures below may upset people squeamish about bugs!)

Yes those nasty pictures are exactly what they look like- 바퀴벌레 or as they are known in English, cockroaches! On our first weekend in our new apartment we caught as least twenty cockroaches around the apartment, it seems we had something of an infestation going on in our "lovely" new apartment.

Before moving we had done our best to find out as much as possible about the new apartment and new job, just as we had done before coming to our first apartment in Korea. Unfortunately the previous occupants of our new apartment weren't quite as forthcoming with information as the people who used to live in our old place. Before moving to Korea we had exchanged a series of emails with the current teachers there and they sent us lots of pictures and information. I sent an email to the current occupants of our new apartment before we moved but after exchanging one email I received this reply "This is the last email I will send you about my accommodation en details about my school. In the future, please contact my Korean co-teacher." Helpful!

So we arrived knowing very little about the apartment, far less than we knew before coming to Gwangju. There were quite a few unpleasant surprises waiting for us when we arrived. They included, the apartment having only a single bed, despite us being told that it was suitable for a couple, the boiler leaking, the previously mentioned cockroaches, the lights in the hallways of the building not working, and the overall dinginess of the place.

The fun continued when Sophie arrived at her new school for the first day and the first time seeing her classroom, textbook, students etc to discover she was due to start teaching within about five minutes of arriving at school! So the first few lessons were a bit farcical as she didn't know how to work the technology and got very little support or assistance from her co-teachers. The rest of the day was so busy she didn't even manage to find the western style toilet until 4pm. The co-teachers also seem to all hate each other, and spend a fair amount of their time bitching about each other- apparently heated arguments across the staffroom are not uncommon. When she finally got to speak to someone about the various issues we had with the apartment she was told that she "had no choice." and was told to "just stop talking!" extremely frank words from Koreans who tend to make an art of of beating around the bush so much it's often hard to even know what they are talking about!

So all in all it wasn't exactly the best possible welcome to Hanam! But things aren't all bad. We are very close to a branch of Homeplus now which is owned by Tesco so carries a few more British products than the average Korean store. English mature cheddar, bottles of London pride and even cheesecake are now all within easy reach, albeit at extortionate prices. We are also very close that Han river which makes for a nice cycling trip, so we bought a pair of second hand bikes soon after arriving. We are also about 15 km closer to Seoul here so it makes it easier to have a night out in the center and get back without being bankrupted by taxi fares. There are even some good points about our building, most of our neighbours are also English teachers. This is the building where Hanam city council houses all the foreign teachers (and the city rowing team) and we have access to shared space on the flat roof, so we've had a few BBQs and parties up there.

We don't have many pictures of the apartment, but it's not much to look at, so I'll sign off with some far more picturesque photos taken during a bike ride alongside the Han, 15 minutes ride from out apartment.

Me with my comedy mini bike, I thought a folding bike would be a good idea, but it was actually a piece of crap and I changed it for a proper mountain bike soon after.

Pretty yellow flowers!

The route by the side of the Han is really popular with cyclists and there are some pretty nice cafes to stop at too.

Couple out for a romantic walk

Stone statue looking very similar to the Hareubang statues common on Jeju

The Han river, not very picturesque in the center of Seoul but beautiful a few miles upstream.

Last days in Gwangju-si

2011-08-09T20:39:00.016+09:00

So May was rushing by and the day that we would have to leave our lovely apartment in Gwangju -si drew ever closer. Yes, the day we would have to move all our crap out of our massive 3 bedroom apartment in Gwangju-si and take it to our new, much smaller place in Hanam was nearly upon us. We weren't leaving voluntarily but because funding cuts had meant that my job no longer existed so I'd got a new position at a middle school in Hanam, a larger city a few miles away, closer to Seoul.

The sun sets on Gwangju-si (sorry bad pun)! As seen from the back window of our apartment.

Doojin apartments, our home in Gwangju-si. A fairly non-descript looking apartment complex just like the thousands of others you can see in South Korea but it was pretty new and the rooms were spacious.

Also, as Gwangju-si is still mostly undeveloped, we had great views of the town unobstructed by other apartment blocks which is unusual for Korea these days. You can see the stadium on the left and mountains rising up behind.

Now Gwangju-si is just a small town (or as our mate Dean called it when he visited - a "one -horse town") and there's not much to do other than wander round E-Mart. AND it's at least an hour away from Seoul by bus. But we still liked it there! I remember how excited we were on our first few days in Gwangju-si as everything was so different compared to back home in England and though that excitement faded as we settled down into the mundane routine of everyday life we still liked wandering around our new adopted home.

Gwangju's E-Mart, a massive supermarket where we wasted far too many hours on Sundays fighting it out with the shopping hordes. It only opened a few months before we arrived. Before that there was nothing but convenience stores and small local marts - no cheese!

Gwangju-si has character and more foreign workers form SE Asia than most similar cities (there to work in the fields and small factories) which meant we had access to such rare things as an authentic Indian restaurant or two and a foreign food market that sold all manner of hard-to-find-in-Korea foods and spices at cheap prices.

Gwangju-si is also surrounded by some pretty countryside as it's a very rural area. In the warmer months, I used to walk back home from my school through the rice fields and it was a really pleasant stroll even if those pesky cattle egrets in the fields wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a decent photo of them! Also, of course, we were sad to be moving away from our friends, though not as sad as were were about losing that beautiful oven (only joking guys)!

Our downstairs neighbours in Gwangju-si - the lovely Jen and Leif!

Leaving Gwangju meant that we had to leave our Hapkido academy too which was a shame (hapkido is a Korean martial art - click here for a more detailed post about our experiences trying to learn it). The Master was very sad to see us go. He's such a nice guy, always happy to see us, giving us little gifts and trying to chat with us despite our terrible Korean and his phone dictionary English! By the time we left we had got our blue belts but sadly we just weren't destined to become black belt hapkido masters, not at Sinwol Academy anyways! We saw the Master again recently and he told us "Rowan, Sop-ee, Toni - many bo-go-ship-o-yo (many miss you)!" - so cute!

Our hapkido school in Gwangju, Sinwol Academy.

I don't have a picture of us with our shiny new blue belts but this girl from our academy is modeling one for you instead.

Earlier in the year, when there was still snow on the ground, the Master took us hapkido foreigners (Rowan, Toni and I) out for dinner at a nice little bibimbap place in the countryside. Following Korean tradition, he paid for the whole lot and afterwards we sat drinking coffee outside by a small bonfire pit.

The Master drinking his coffee by the fire. We never found out his actual name but "The Master" is pretty evocative on its own!

On a more positive note, leaving Gwangju-si meant we HAD to have a leaving party. We decided to give it a fancy dress theme despite Rowan's usual hatred of dressing up. The theme was ajummas and ajjoshis. As previously mentioned on this blog, 'ajumma' is the Korean term of address for an older, married woman or any woman of marrying age. The stereotypical idea of an 'ajumma' is a short, stout, tough old woman with a tight, wiry perm who wears crazy-bright clothes in clashing colors and patterns and who possesses a strong determination to be at the front of every queue.

The ajjoshi is her male equivalent i.e. an older man, usually married. The ajjoshi stereotype is a little different because it's a guy. The stereotypical image of an ajjoshi is an older guy who enjoys makgeolli, spitting in the street (very loudly), staring at foreigners and like the 'ajjuma' having no respect for personal space and fighting to get that last seat on the bus or subway.

Of course these stereotypes exist for a reason but not all older Korean folk are like that and it's not all negative anyway! The older people in Korea can be incredibly kind and generous to foreigners and they really seem to know how to have a good time - we often see them out in large groups dancing to "trot" music (a kind of granny techno!) or going off to do some hiking kitted out in the latest gear and carrying plenty of makgeolli to celebrate reaching the top. I hope I'm that active and having that much fun when I get to their age. I'd rather be an 'ajjuma' here than a 'little old lady' back in England, locked up in my house, waiting for meals on wheels with no social life to speak of!

The aim of our dress up party was to celebrate the best of 'ajjuma and ajjoshi' fashion and to say good bye to our friends in Gwangju-si. We held it round our apartment and in the afternoon some of us hit up the local second hand clothes shops near the market to get our costumes. The women in the shops obviously thought we were insane but had a good laugh at the crazy foreigners trying on the shiny jackets, huge visors, leopard print blouses and stretchy pink sports pants!

In our costumes. Lots of visors, shiny stuff and clashing patterns. The folks at the back are wearing face masks. It's very common here to see women of all ages wearing these masks in the summer. They are shaped to cover your nose and lower face and have a slit i them for your mouyuth so you can breathe. You wear them to keep the sun off so you can keep that attractive ghostly white face so fashionable here. You can see David's home made makgeolli (Korean rice wine) in the big clear tub in the foreground - it was...special!

Jen looking fab and rather convincing as an ajjuma!

Rowan baked a pavlova for the party - it was delish!

Jen and I in our splendid costumes next to a rather rude statement! Now how did that get there...

On our last weekend in Gwangju, we went for a final wander around armed with the camera. We started off walking along by the river and i finally got a chance to get some decent pictures of those pesky egrets that I'd been trying to snap on my way home from work all year!

A heron in the river in Gwangju-si.

Ha! Got you at last, egret.

You can see loads of these birds in the rice paddies. They have a very distinctive shape when in flight.

Some charming graffiti under a bridge in Gwangju-si. It's very rare to see graffiti in Korea. The 5 squares on the right are supposed to represent someone giving you the finger!

By coincidence, we found that there was a community festival going on in the large park behind E-Mart with stalls, a few kiddie rides and a stage with musical performances going on all night. It was a beautiful sunny day and a fun way to spend our last Saturday in Gwangju.

The park behind E-Mart has a river running through it and is surrounded by mountains. The festival was on the left bank.

You could make a pot at this stall.

Or shoot for prizes at this stall (like Jen and Leif here - would you trust these 2 with your kids?!).

Or some delicious but horrendously overpriced pork from this stall.

Or even eat dolphin meat at this place! Tuna friendly dolphin anyone?

Of course no Korean festival is complete without a guy dressed up as a woman with lots of make up singing old style songs with a beat!

There was a performance stage at the festival. These guys are dressed up for their rendition of some traditional Korean music.

More folks dressed up in their traditional costumes.

Cell phone plus hanbok ftw!

Two cute kids from the group of local school children who sang at the festival.

Have you seen these foreigners? If you see them do not approach. They are armed with beer and highly dangerous! (Me, Rowan, Jen and Leif)

I ended up playing at being a press pack photographer for a bit at the festival.I was standing at the edge of the stage trying to get some better pictures and one of the stewards took my arm and pulled me under the barrier to join the proper photographers right at the edge of the stage! It was cool but I suffered some serious 'lens envy' compared to their massive long things!

A pair of scantily clad young ladies to keep the menfolk happy!

These two girls did a kind of break dancing routine to some K-pop music that was pretty cool.

This guy was really getting his funk on in front of the whole crowd! Check out the backwards cap! It was more fun watching him than what was on the stage!

Cool shades too!

Do that funky chicken!

Some more traditional music and fan dancing from the hanbok ladies.

Pretty lit up arch walk at the festival.

For me, one of the saddest things about moving to Hanam was saying goodbye to my school. Rowan was able to stay on at his school in Gwangju-si and he still works there now, commuting in with his friend, the geography teacher, but for me it was the end of the road (sorry bad driving pun)! It hadn't always been easy working there and it had been a steep learning curve for me as I'd never taught English before but I had made friends among the teachers there and there were some really lovely students in my classes that I knew I would miss (and some bloody horrid ones that I'd be glad to see the last of but never mind!). I took my camera to school on one one of my last days and snapped my afterschool class kids and took a last set of photos of my walk home through the fields. (I've been taking pictures of my walk home from school for months and meant to do a proper post about it - watch this space for some retrograde posting!)

My school in Gwangju, Kyongan Middle.

The last session of my afterschool class. We played some party games including pass the parcel with English questions as the educational twist.

Two of my favourite students with the giant chocolate bar that was the prize from pass the parcel. Their English names were Benjamin and Jordan. Jordan (the boy in front) was the only student that came to all of my extracurricular activities, including my English camps. It was sweet he wanted to come to everything but sometimes I wished he didn't as I had to make new material every time so he didn't have to repeat stuff!

One of my classes were sad to hear I was leaving and wrote me a load of goodbye messages on the whiteboard i the English classroom. By the way, Koreans write 'TT' to indicate two eyes crying.

The dark empty corridor outside of my classroom as I left for one of the last times TT.

Before (beginning of school year in March): I battled for months to keep the classroom neat and tidy and keep these seat numbers on the table. It was a bitter and hard fought war.

After (last week of teaching): I think it was a ultimately a losing battle!

This is the road outside my middle school in Gwangju. Look closely and you can see an unfinished bridge in the background. They had been building that on and off for the whole year I worked there. I'd hoped to see them complete it before I left - another broken dream!

The following few pictures are a small selection of the ones I took on my last walk back home from my school through the rice fields. i always found these walks relaxing and a good way to wind down after a stressful day doing battle with the more intractable classes that I had to teach.

A funny little quad bike and trailer combo I spotted on my way home. I saw all kinds of bizarre vehicles driving along the little roads that cut through Gwangju's fields.

So overall, we were pretty sad to be leaving Gwangju-si as despite sometimes finding it a bit boring and wishing it was closer to Seoul it had been a good home to us for a year. Still nothing lasts forever and we were lucky to still have jobs despite all the funding problems even if they were in different cities. Next stop - Hanam!

Buddha's Birthday: Seoul Lotus Lantern Festival

2011-07-30T22:17:00.003+09:00

Did you know that Buddha's birthday is celebrated on the eighth day of the fourth month in the Chinese Lunar calendar every year in East Asian countries? No, I didn't either until I got a bonus day off work for a Korean National Holiday in honour of it - nice-uh! Buddha's birthday was on May 10 this year which was a Monday giving us a sweet 3 day weekend.

This day is celebrated across East Asia in various different ways. In Korea, temples are decorated with lots of lanterns and according to Wikipedia "on the day of Buddha's birth, many temples provide free meals and tea to all visitors". The Lotus Lantern Festival in Seoul is the key Korean celebration held in the lead up to Buddha's Birthday. This year it ran over the weekend of May 6 - May 8 and included a huge lantern parade, the chance to make your own lantern and various traditional performances and ceremonies that you can watch or have a go at yourself.

Paper lanterns decorating Jogyesa Temple in central Seoul.

The festival is held in the Jongno area of Seoul near Insadong, the city's cultural centre. We trooped over there via a long bus and subway journey with a bunch of our friends from Gwangju-si. We went on a warm Saturday afternoon and first checked out the cool antiques and bric-a-brac on the tourist friendly, pedestrianised streets of Insadong. As usual there were lots of tourists souvenir hunting and locals just going for a stroll.

Spreadin' the love in Insadong.

Our friend David getting his free hug.

A cool Buddha head at a shop in Insadong. It has 4 faces on it - sad, angry, smiling and laughing.

The happy side of Buddha! I didn't by this one but I did end up getting one in China eventually. I keep it by my bed now and turn its face round to the appropriate expression for how I feel jusy in case Rowan hasn't noticed!

Hangin' with Ronald and the Gwangju massive killing time before the lantern parade started.

Next, we made our way to the Jogyesa temple (still in Jongno-gu in central Seoul) to see all the decorations and have a go at making our own lanterns. Jogyesa Temple is the head of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism and has nice peaceful grounds considering it's in the middle of Seoul. According to Wikipedia, it also contains Korean Natural Monument number 9 (love those numbers!), an ancient white pine tree.

Jogyesa Temple's grounds were decorated with hundreds of brightly coloured paper lanterns. There were lots of people at the temple, some coming to worship and others to get paper lanterns for the parade.

Paper lantern making assembly line in Jogyesa Temple. They were free and came with a pack of candles.

Stephanie and I with our lanterns assembled and ready for action!

We saw a couple of friendly monks at the temple in orange robes who were answering some foreign visitors questions about Buddhism and their way of life in fairly decent English.

Worshippers praying in front of some giant Buddha statues in Jogyesa Temple.

Close up of the two gold statues.

Then we stopped off at a little 감자탕 (kamcha-tang - potato soup) restaurant for some food, beer and of course soju. We had to prop our lanterns up against the wall next to the shelves where you're supposed to leave your shoes and they fell over a couple of times with much crashing of metal poles and embarrassment - damn waygooks!

Rather unappetising sounding alien rice dish at the kamcha-tang restaurant.

David being lumbered with ordering the food as per usual due to his superior Korean language skills.

Ingredients for the kamcha-tang in the pot prior to cooking. As with many Korean dishes, you cook it yourself at your table.

After we'd eaten enough noodles and rice to make your stomach explode we gathered up our lanterns and made our way to the parade route as dusk loomed. We wanted to avoid the crowds as much as possible but as is always the case with big public events anywhere in the world, this was no easy task. We ended up standing on a slightly smaller and quieter side road to watch the parade though it soon got really busy there too. It began in daylight with bands of costumed people carrying lanterns or playing instruments.

The obligatory samul nori (Korean folk music) performance that you seem to get at every Korean event - this time in parade format.

Ajummas with their lanterns.

I was still revelling in having a dslr camera again and had brought my new tripod with me to capture those difficult low light lantern-at-night shots once it got dark.

Standing at the side of the road with our lanterns waiting for the parade to come past as it got dark.

Lantern in front of a sign for Insadong and Jogyesa temple.

Once the lantern parade properly got going it was spectacular. Wave after wave of people, most dressed in costumes of one sort or another, traditional, modern or ridiculous, marched past cheerfully holding aloft their handmade lanterns. There were some huge floats with beautifully decorated lanterns in various shapes, many being traditional Buddhist images and a few that were a bit more novel.

It's a bit dark but you can just about make out the monks in their robes carrying lanterns.

People in the parade waved at the bystanders as they passed.

Crazy character lantern float.

More character lanterns.

The 2 photos above are of a group of Thais (I think) in full costume with drums and flags. There were a few different groups of people from other countries who took part in the parade, adding a bit of exotic flavour.

Cute owl lanterns.

A beautiful dragon lantern being carried along by pairs of hard working Koreans.

More monks.

This was perhaps the strangest of all the lanterns. The centre of the face was a TV screen that showed pictures of kids faces, changing image every so often to a different child. Not sure what the reason was behind it but it looked...unique!

It went on and on for maybe a couple of hours or so, the stream of lantern bearers seemed never-ending. Eventually we could see that the parade was coming to a close and we decided to try to be clever and leave a little early to avoid the crush on the subway. Well, it was still pretty crowded of course, but we did get home for more soju a little earlier than we otherwise would and that's the most important thing! As we left the main drag of the parade we saw its participants relaxing and chatting after their part in it had finished. It felt like being backstage at the theatre or something!

Koreans seem to love making as much noise as possible, whether its students shouting at school or an old guy with his Bongo truck trying to sell his piles of garlic by broadcasting a recorded message about them to the whole neighbourhood via EXTREMELY loud speakers. Even the monks got in on the act at the festival - maybe he's using a monkcrophone (sorry - I hate myself too).

"Backstage" gathering.

Rowan, Leif and Amy still carrying their lit lanterns.

A group of older Koreans in traditional hanbok cheerfully posing with their lanterns.

On the way to the subway station having given up on keeping the lanterns alight.

Our first visitor from home

2011-07-25T12:33:00.003+09:00

Back in spring we got our first visitor from England, to be honest I hadn't really expected anyone to make the long journey out here. Korea is neither cheap nor easy to get to from England, and doesn't exactly have a huge amount of beaches or good weather, so it's not a common tourist destination. Still our friend Tom who we know from university made it all the way out here just to see us, which was quite an honour.

His journey out here went completely smoothly for thousands of miles until he was a few miles from Gwangju when his bus broke down! So he was sat by the side of the road waiting for an hour for a new bus to come along and take him those final few miles. Luckily he'd hired a phone at the airport so we could keep in touch and I knew what had happened. When he finally arrived we returned to our apartment and had a bit of lunch and then didn't do much for the rest of the day. Tom was obviously pretty tired from an 11 hour flight plus bus delays etc. so we just chilled out, had a chat and caught up on news and gossip from home.

In the evening, we met up with our neighbours and some other friends and when out for duck. We have recently discovered that duck is one of the most delicious foods in Korea. At our favorite duck place in Gwangju their special is duck cooked in two ways. First you get duck shabbu shabbu which is very thinly sliced duck which comes out with a pot of broth boiling away on a little table top stove. You take the thin slices of duck and dip them into the boiling broth to cook them. After all the duck is cooked you get some noodles to cook in the broth and finally some rice to soak up the last bits. After the shabbu shabbu the second and best course comes out, thick slices of duck roasted inside a pumpkin and sprinkled with nuts. The pumpkin soaks up the duck fat and picks up its delicious, rich taste.

Tom and our friend Stephanie with a pile of thin sliced duck and a bowl of broth in front of them

Our neighbours' friend Adam was visiting from Canada at the same time as Tom, he's the one laughing in the foreground. You can see the duck in pumpkin in the front of this picture. It comes in thick slices with a topping of nuts and pumpkin seeds.

A rather sickening picture that is only worth posting because it was honestly not staged, this is just how the noodles fell at the end on the bowl.

The next day we decided to take Tom on a tour of Gwangju. There seemed to be some kind of festival going on in the stadium across the road from our apartment so our first stop was in there to see what was going on. Whatever was happening it wasn't much clearer from inside the stadium. Groups of kids seemed to be marching around, a guy on the stage was shouting into an echoing PA and various people from the city hall were hanging around for photo opportunities, I've no idea what it was all in aid of though!

Some people in suits standing around being in photos and doing whatever it is that people in suits do at these kind of things

Balloons that the kids released.

After we finished there we strolled through the rest of town taking in the local market and other things which we've covered in detail in previous posts. We came through the center of town and ended up at the edge of the fields that lead to Sophie's school. The weather was just starting to warm up after the long cold winter and for the first time in months the fields were free of snow. So we decided to take a walk through the fields and look at a traditional graveyard just above the fields which we'd been wanting to check out for a while but it had been far too cold. The graveyard was really beautiful the weather was just right for talking a stroll. The dead dog dumped by the side of the road wasn't so beautiful but gave Sophie an interesting subject to photograph none the less.

Sophie's delightful picture of a dead dog

Traditional Korean graveyard.

Korean grave yards are very different to English graveyards. They're not next to a church or temple but are usually found on the sides of hills out in country side, they're also one of the few places in Korea where you see grass as the trees are cleared away.

The Korean graves do have grave stones as you can see but the the main feature of the grave is a grassy mound. The graves are kept pretty well maintained as families visit the graves several times a year for various special days

The next day we headed into Seoul our first stop was Namdaemun, to show Tom around the market but also to visit Sophie's favorite little camera store, a place called Yesdica. You can find directions and an excellent guide to camera shopping in Korea here. Our reason for visiting this time was because Sophie needed to get a new camera. Without going into too many details, some idiot left the camera bag with the camera body, three different lenses and various other accessories behind in a taxi. Yes, I was that idiot and somehow Sophie managed not to kill me! I'm really not sure I'd have been so forgiving if the roles were reversed. So with our wallets about a million won (just over £500) lighter we headed off to the war museum to take the new camera through it's paces.

The friendly owner of our favorite Korean camera shop

It was our second visit the war museum. To read about it in more detail check our first post: http://bloodriceandnoodles.blogspot.com/2011/06/seoul-museums-part-3-war-memorial-of.html

It's a massive museum and despite this being the second visit we've still barely scratched the surface. From our first visit we saw that there was a lot of cool stuff outside, so since the weather was good and it was getting a bit late in the day we concentrated on the vehicles, statues and other assorted stuff out there. One of my favorite "weapons" on display at the museum were the propaganda speakers which were used to broadcast material over the border to the north. Apparently these speakers had a range of 15 kilometers - now that would make for a good party.

Civilians in the bronze monument out the front of the museum.

Some pretty cool small surveillance and medical evacuation helicopters

Little girl running with prow of gunship in the background

A plane... of some kind or other

The guns of an assorted array of tanks - with some pretty flowers - nice spot to read a book.

The previously mentioned speaker with a 15 kilometer range.

Missiles.

One of the few indoor pictures, this is a replica of admiral Yi Sun Shin's famous turtle ship, the revolutionary fully enclosed deck studded with iron spikes lead to many victories against the Japanese forces in the 1500's and Korean's are still very proud of this ship.

Kids playing on some anti aircraft guns, It's nice to see weapons of war becoming a playground for kids.

Lot's of the vehicles were open so you could climb around inside and have a look, Korean museums tend to be much more hands on and interactive than their English counterparts.

Statue of a soldier and civilian embracing.

During the week that Tom was with us we were still working, so we had to leave him to his own devices during the day. He got up to all sorts of exciting things like hiking up Bukhansan, (a big mountain north of Seoul). And visiting Chuncheon, which is a pretty town in the mountains at the border of our province out to the east.

While Tom was around we took a trip to Moran market, which is apparently the biggest market in Korea. At some point we will do a more details post all about Moran market, it really is an amazing place when you can see all kinds of Korean culture and find everything from roast centipedes to live geese, not to mention whole roast dogs and various steamed offal. It truly is an assault on all the senses.

Corn being milled into pulp by stone grindstones.

Pancakes being fried up from the corn pulp being milled in the previous picture.

The traditional entertainment at the market, a man playing a rather unconvincing woman with money in her hair.

The guys banging drums to provide a beat for the dancing "girl" to sing and dance to.

No I haven't had a stroke, I'm eating some incredibly chewy sweets that the dancing and druming guys were selling and am trying to prise my teeth apart.

Some video of the guys doing their stuff.

After spending a week with us Tom headed off to visit our friend Dean down in Jeju, an island off the south coast where he now runs a guesthouse with his Korean wife, Tom had a great time down in Jeju but since we couldn't come with him I can't tell you about that.

Over all it was really nice having a visitor to show around, it was great to see a friend from home and it was also nice to have an excuse to go around tourist sites that we'd been meaning to revisit for ages.

Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival

2011-07-12T22:20:00.002+09:00

Back in April we travelled with our posse from Gwangju-si to the Spring Flower Festival at Yeouido in central Seoul. It was one of the first properly warm weekends of the year after a long, bitterly cold winter. The arrival of Spring in Korea is celebrated by lots of local festivals all over the country where people flock to admire the wild flowers and enjoy a bit of stroll in the sunshine.

Pretty cherry blossom at the Spring Flower Festival.

The two festival mascots posing for photos.

Of course, the blooms that most people go to see are the cherry blossoms and Yeouido is the most popular place in Seoul to see them. Yeouido is actually a large island in the Han river and is one of the most affluent areas of Seoul. Apparently, Koreans call Yeouido "Korea's Manhattan". It contains Korea's National Assembly Building where the government meet. The street behind this building is lined with around 1400 cherry trees and is the most famous cherry blossom street in Seoul. Naturally that means huge crowds of people and a scrum on the subway to get there and to get away again but it was a really pretty sight and worth the effort. The cherry blossom street ran right next to the river Han and the trees and their flowers were so dense that they formed a kind of snowy white and pink tunnel.

Walking along the most popular cherry blossom street in Seoul.

In places, the cherry blossom was so dense that it formed a tunnel, a pretty tunnel filled with snap happy folk armed with all kinds of cameras.

Another shot of the blossom as it was just so pretty!

The National Assembly Building where the Korean Government sits. According to Wikipedia, from 2004 - 2009 the Korean National Assembly gained international notoriety for its frequent violent disputes including "open physical combat". In 2009 "Assembly members battled each other with sledgehammers and fire extinguishers". Hardcore!

Some inspiring type statue in front of the Assembly building. Or are they just getting ready to throw that metal ring at other Assembly members?

The festival wasn't all flowers either. As well as the blossoms, there was a samul nori performance (traditional Korean folk music), a flower decorating exhibition and some other arty, cultural stuff including a bizarre drama/modern dance performance by a man and woman on a stage - the man just stood there looking impassive while the woman jumped and stalked about the stage in a green dress - weird. I still have no idea what that was all about. There was also the usual food and drink stalls and one stall filled with strange animal and insect displays, some alive and some dead. Not sure what the link was to the Flower Festival there but whatever.

Samul nori performers playing on the cherry blossom street.

Samul nori involves a lot of drum banging, dancing and bright costumes.

The performers also use big metal gongs and pipes to create the tune.

Some of the drums were pretty massive compared to the size of the players.

Samul nori looks impressive and it gives older Koreans a chance to jump around making a lot of noise - though of course they never need an excuse for that anyway!

This guy was cool. He played the pipe for the samul nori performance from his mobility scooter.

The other pipe player.

Koreans express their love of herbs.

The two actors in the bizarre stage performance. The guy just stood there stony faced while the woman danced around the stage.

A caged sugar glider at the weird animal and insect tent. It was very cute looking but I found it's little pink paws a bit disturbing somehow.

Some really gross looking grubs at the same stall. I'm not sure but I think they were selling them as pets.

Most of the insects in the tent were dead and on display ion glass cabinets like these unfortunate creatures.

Some unlucky butterflies.

More weird and deceased bugs.

It was a really nice place to stroll around and a good opportunity for taking photos, something I'm always keen to do (though unfortunately so is everyone else in Korea)! Lots of people were riding bikes and flying kites by the river Han and there were some folks out kayaking there too.

A cute couple doing a stereotypical cute Korean couple thing - riding a tandem bike.

Kayaks on the Han river.

Our friend Amy flying a kite by the Han river.

Overall, it was a very pleasant day out and a great way to welcome in the Spring. The crowds were quite intense but there was plenty of space in the parks at beside the Han to chill out and sit down. There were also lots of convenience stores around to pick up beer and snacks and everything is better with booze.

Kids playing in the fountain in a park by the river.

Sunshine through the trees in Yeouido.

Goodbye Gwangju, hello Hanam

2011-06-22T22:37:00.002+09:00

Careful readers of this blog may have noticed that we are more than a little behind in our posts, well I say ours, Sophie is still keeping going, I haven't posted anything in so long that I barely remember it's existence! Well there is a reason that we got so far behind, and to understand why you have to cast your mind back to a lovely spring day back in March this year...

Everything was planned out for for the next year, we'd decided to stay at our schools, which despite their idiosyncrasies weren't bad places, we were used to the curriculum, we'd built up good relationships with the students and teachers and were generally looking forward to doing another year. Then it all fell apart. Sophie got called down to the office at her school one morning to discover that her school wasn't going to be able to renew her contract. It seems that the organisation which runs the foreign teacher's program (called GEPIK) had decided that it was going to "streamline" it's hiring process to make it more "efficient" - bywords for money saving job cuts if ever I've heard them! So their decision was that there would only be two periods a year when foreign teachers could be hired (in September and March) and there would be no hiring outside of these months. Unfortunately for us, we were hired in May (outside of the hiring months) and missed the cut off date for the new rule being introduced by five days!

When I heard this I called up our local area coordinator in a bit of a panic. I discovered though that my contract was funded differently to Sophie's and was paid for by the city authority rather than the province wide agency that was "streamlining" so I could still have my contract renewed and stay at the same school. The next big shock was the discovery that Sophie's school alone provided the money for our accommodation, and as they were losing their funding there would be nowhere for us to live.

Home sweet home - our apartment building in Gwangju. It may look a bit like a bleak, Soviet era concrete box but it was actually a really nice apartment, huge, new and with great views. We were really sad to lose it, especially the oven that came with it (ovens are not standard in Korean kitchens)!

View over Gwangju from the front balcony of our old apartment. It was on the 15th floor and offered unobstructed views over the city.

Sunset over the mountains viewed from out the back of our Gwangju apartment.

So the end result of this streamlining was that Sophie would lose her job and we were going to lose our apartment - not good. We tried looking for new public school jobs but without much success as it's always difficult for couples to find jobs with shared housing working for the public schools, especially outside of the peak hiring times. Luckily (in a way) a teacher at my school had just moved from a school in the nearby city of Hanam and told us about a job there. After a bit of umming and arring and faffing around it was arranged that Sophie would take the job there and the accommodation provided and I would commute from Hanam to my job in Gwangju every morning.

This meant that Sophie would lose her 2 weeks of extra holiday to visit home that you get when you renew your contract at the same school as well as her flight home, pretty crap when you consider those benefits are worth a good few thousand pounds. But the worst thing about the whole affair was the poor communication from GEPIK and the last minute notice that we got. In Korea you get used to being told things with less than five minutes notice, but you'd think a change in policy as big as this might have been announced a little earlier!

I suppose at least we still have jobs which is more than many people can say in these days of recession and other bullshit. Although given some of the problems that were to come, maybe we'd have been better off without new jobs, but that's for another post.

Seoul Museums: Part 3 - War Memorial of Korea

2011-06-10T16:41:00.627+09:00

Our third museum outing in Seoul was to the War Memorial of Korea in Yongsan-dong. Despite being called a memorial it's really more like a museum and a huge one at that. It first opened in 1994 and it is apparently the biggest landmark of its kind in the world. The museum documents Korean military history with all kinds of artefacts on display ranging from stone arrowheads from prehistoric times to modern guns, tanks, helicopters and planes.

The War Memorial museum of Korea. (Photo from Wikipedia)

It is split into outdoor and indoor exhibits. The indoor exhibits are housed in 7 different exhibition halls: The Memorial hall, The War History Room, The Korean War Room, The Expeditionary Forces Room, The Armed Forces Room, The Large Equipment Room and The Korean Defense Industries Room. These rooms all looked interesting and I've heard that the Korean Wart Room is supposed to be the best part of the museum but we only made it around a couple of them. This was because, despite Lonely Planet reckoning that its possible to see the whole Memorial in 3 hours, we only had 2 hours and I'm one of those annoying people who likes to read every little scrap of information available on each exhibit. We've since visited the memorial again and still haven't seen all of it because it's just so massive so I guess I'll just write about the parts we saw this time and cover the bits we missed in a later blog post.

Painted drum in entrance to museum.

We started with the War History Room that covered Korea's military history from prehistoric times to the start of the Japanese occupation of Korea in 1910. There were the usual stone axes and bronze swords in the prehistoric section. It was fairly well laid out but pretty generic in my opinion. The Three Kingdoms section was more interesting. The Three Kingdoms period ran from 57 AD to 668 AD and refers to the time when Korea as a country didn't really exist yet but was in fact 3 separate kingdoms, the Baekje, Silla and Goguryeo. There were some interesting displays in this section and I particularly liked maps that traced the changing borders of the kingdoms as they fought among themselves and against other local powers for control over the Korean peninsular and parts of China.

The Joseon Dynasty (1392 - 1910) section also had some great artefacts and displays including a hwacha (a kind of early missile launcher that fired lots of arrows at the same time), a mock up of a Hwaseong (Korean castle) and a replica of one of Admiral Yi Sun-shin's turtle ships (Kobukson). There were also some dioramas of Japanese forces invading Korea, something that happened repeatedly in the 16th Century and that would happen again in 1910. According to the museum displays, Korea also frequently had to fight off Japanese pirate attacks throughout its history.

The "Kobukson" or turtle ship was designed by one of Korea's favourite heroes, Admiral Sun-shin, and used by him during the Japanese invasions of Korea in the late 16th century. These ships participated in several important naval victories over the Japanese fleet and have now reached, along with the admiral, a legendary status here in South Korea. However, some boring killjoys say that the importance of these ships may have been exaggerated as there were probably never more than a dozen in service at any one time.

The turtle ships had at least 5 different types of cannon and the dragon head was a cannon too. In fact, the dragon head could also shoot flame from it's mouth - awesome! Most importantly, every ship had a fully covered deck to protect the crew from cannon fire and there were large iron spikes on it to discourage enemy forces from trying to board it. They were hardcore ships!

Mock up of a Korean castle (hwaseong).

Diorama depicting the Japanese invasions of Korea that took place from 1592-1598.

Korean civilians surrendering to invading Japanese forces.

The Hwacha ("fire vehicle") was an early anti-personnel gunpowder weapon that was unique to Korea. It could fire up to 100 steel tipped rockets or 200 flaming arrows in one shot and had a range of up to 500 yards. It was first invented in 1409 and was used extensively during the Japanese invasions of 1592-98. This was a seriously powerful weapon. During the Battle of Haengju, 3400 Koreans managed to hold off 30,000 attacking Japanese soldiers with the help of 40 hwachas. (Photo care of the War Memorial website)

Next, we moved on to the Memorial Hall. This was lined with busts of Korean national heroes who had served various wars including the Vietnam War in which 4700 Koreans were killed. I was surprised to discover that there had been South Koreans there at all, let alone that so many had died in action there. Under each bust, there was a plaque telling the hero's story, usually a rather gory one with plenty of insane acts of bravery. It was pretty awe inspiring stuff and made me glad that I'm a teacher not a soldier.

Busts of Korean national heroes in the Memorial Hall.

This is General Lee Keun-sok, a commander of a fighter wing during the early days of the Korean War. On July 4, 1950, his plane was badly damaged and he couldn't return to base so he destroyed an enemy tank by crashing into it. He received a medal for his brave self sacrifice, posthumously of course.

This was 28 year old Major Kang Chae-ku. He was a company commander who saved several members of his unit by covering, with his body, a live grenade that had been dropped by a soldier during training in preparation for deployment to Vietnam in 1965. Respect to this guy, he really did take his responsibilities to his men seriously. The buck stopped with him.

This is Gunnery Sgt. Jee Deok-Chill. He was a medic dispatched to Vietnam with the 2nd Marine Brigade. On February 1st, he was hit by enemy fire while treating wounded soldiers. Although he was wounded, he managed to kill 20 enemy soldiers before being killed himself . Another posthumous medal.

Once we'd had our fill of national heroes and tales of insane bravery, we moved back towards the entrance where we found a temporary exhibition about the Cheonan. The Cheonan was a South Korean naval ship that broke in half and sank near the sea border with North Korea on 26th March 2010 with the loss of all 46 members of its crew. An international investigation team concluded that the Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo launched by a miniature North Korean submarine. Of course, this caused a lot of bad feeling between the two Koreas and made everybody very twitchy for a while as North Korea apparently has some nuclear capability.

The Cheonan exhibition used photos of the ship, its crew and the wreckage that was salvaged in the following weeks to document what happened.

Seeing photos of the "46 warriors of the Cheonan" was moving. Some of the crew looked very young and reminded me of my middle school students. South Korea still has conscription for boys so we know that most of our male students will spend a couple of years in one of the branches of the armed forces. It's depressing to think that they could end up like this.

I remember all this was kicking off just before I came to Korea and I did wonder what on earth I was letting myself in for but I have never really felt like I live in a divided country that is technically still at war (the North and the South never actually signed a peace treaty at the end of the Korean war). Sure, there have been a few national drills to practice for the potential invasion from the North but no one takes those seriously. The shelling of Yeonpeong island by North Korea in November 2010 was more serious and 2 South Korean soldiers and 2 civilians were killed. The image of smoke billowing out of shattered houses clearly shook people up here as this was the first attack on South Korean soil in decades. Even my co teachers were worried. Still everything seems quiet now so we'll see.

Next, we moved outside. The outdoor exhibition area was huge and really interesting. It had loads of cool outdoor displays of military vehicles form the Korean War and from other wars too from a range of different countries. There were aeroplanes, helicopters, missiles, armoured personnel carriers (APC), tanks, trucks and boats. Even better, you could actually go inside or clamber on board most of the vehicles which was fascinating in that it gave you an idea of just how cramped and uncomfortable some of those tanks and APCs were. Of course, being able to get inside the vehicles was a big hit with the kids too as well as their gung ho dads. I think this is another example of a Korean museum focussing on making its exhibits an interactive experience just as many parts of Seodaemun Prison museum were interactive. I couldn't imagine a similar museum in London (such as the Imperial War Museum) allowing visitors to climb all over the military hardware but I certainly enjoyed the experience!

Some kind of big tank - sorry my knowledge of military vehicles aint all that!

That big tank again - from the front this time.

Plane!

The massive B-52 Bomber. It was so huge I couldn't fit it all in one photo!

Big metal ship ahoy!

This strange looking covered speedboat is actually a North Korean semi submarine. It was used by the North when they infiltrated South Korea by sea near Busan on 3 December 1983.

Yay! More tanks and you could climb on these ones.

Driver's seat inside a tank. Not very comfortable.

The very cramped metal innards of an armored personnel carrier. I think this thing had a crew of 8 or 10 people that crowded together in there.

A U.S. Cobra helicopter. It was developed in 1967 and used by the Americans during the Vietnam War. Korea started using these helicopters in 1976.

Rocket!

A phallic rocket composition. Scary but faintly ridiculous at the same time.

Military speedboat thingy.

The outdoor area also contained The Korean War Monument, the massive Statue of Brothers and the Peace clock tower. And, on the left side of the museum entrance there is a monument containing all the names of the UN soldiers who were killed in the Korean War.

This is the huge Statue of Brothers. It is a symbol of the Korean war and depicts two Korean brothers who are both soldiers. The older on is a South Korean soldier and the younger one is from the North Korean army. They are meeting in a battlefield and expressing love, forgiveness and reconciliation according to the information next to the statue. The crack down the dome represents the division between the North and the South but also the hope for reunification.

Close up of the two brothers. Wonder why the South got to be the big brother - maybe that's how they feel they stand in the relationship.

The Statue of Brothers against the backdrop of a hazy early Spring afternoon with the usual apartment blocks rising up in the background.

Monument depicting South Korean soldiers during the Korean War.

Close up of part of the monument.

Korean soldiers helping a wounded colleague.

The War Memorial is a great museum and if you ever happen to be in Seoul with a few spare hours on your hands I'd definitely recommend a visit. We saw a lot of interesting stuff but we missed a lot more. We didn't get to the Korean War room which is supposed to be really fascinating. We also missed out on a mock up of some Viet Cog tunnels which would have been cool. On the weird, interactive display front, we missed the Combat Experience room and the shooting range which both sound intriguing. But they'll have to wait for another day and another post - watch this space!