Ya Know, Just Your Traditional Thanksgiving Travels

For those of you that know me well, you know that the word "traditional" hardly sums me up. So, here is my tail of MY traditional Thanksgiving travels for this year.

With this said, some of you may be questioning both my sanity and my ability to read a calendar. I assure you now, both are securely intact. Let me explain. Korean Thanksgiving is called Chuseok (pronounced chew-sock) and is celebrated during early to mid September. Due to summer camp scheduling and whatnot, we had to work on a national holiday in August (which we are to have off, according to our contracts) therefore they tagged on that day to our Chuseok holiday, which was fine by me because a five day weekend means a greater amount of possibilities for travel! So I took full advantage...sort of. As you know, I am a bit of a last minute-er these days, Chuseok holiday plans not withstanding. There was some debate as to what to do exactly, but when I found cheap tickets to Japan and I had travel buddies down to take the jump with me, I was all in like lick-idy-slit and the tickets were booked (on Wednesday) to leave Sunday for Tokyo for three and a half days.

Therese and Steve (the new teachers, who will no longer be referred to as such because I have used their names enough that you should have caught on by now, and if not...you will soon enough.) signed up for the aimless wander to Japan with me and it was set! And by that I mean that I booked the tickets. Other than that, I honestly had NO idea what it was that I wanted to see or do in Tokyo. I simply knew that I wanted to get another stamp in my passport and that I wanted that stamp to come from Japan right now. I did make a small (very small) effort to look up some things to do in Tokyo, but then quickly realized that I couldn't be bothered and that Therese would be more likely to sort things out, so I just left it to her (because as I would come to even more clearly realize, Steve is even less of a planner than I am, if that's possible!) and she did not disappoint.

pre-trip. You know it's a good night when someone's on the floor

The three of us had a bang up night pre trip (even though we were supposed to be heading to Busan Saturday some time to be there and ready to go to catch our flight around 11am on Sunday) partying it up and having some good laughs and got WAY too little sleep before jumping boarders to a new country. But, we all made it to the bus, to the airport, and on the plane with time to spare. We landed in Tokyo ready to take it all in! But first, to ditch the bags. But where? That would be one of the important and reoccurring questions of the trip it would turn out.

Hey, hey, hey. Look who's in Japan bitches! (that's me on the floor)

After wandering for about 45 minutes with no luck in finding a hotel, hostel, or person who could direct us to said locations, we finally gave in and busted out the go ol smart phone with some wifi connection action. The amazingly accurate (albeit overwhelming and incredibly difficult to follow) directions given to the hostel of our choosing finally resulted in us caving and haling a taxi for the remainder of what turned out to be a pretty long and winding trek. When we got dropped off we weren't sure (nor was our driver) as to where our hostel was exactly, so we just began to wander.

Before I go on with this, I have to break and comment on the fact that I was completely and embarrassingly unaware of the fact that the Japanese drive on the other side of the road from us in the States! I was not expecting this (as they drive on our same side here in Korea) and it really caught me off guard!

That ain't a bad view

Anyway, once being dropped of, we tried walking to our hostel but soon realized we were coming in full circle and had not yet seen hide nor hair of this mystical hostel we were in search of (it all of a sudden became the holy grail of ascertainable objects for some reason the longer we walked in the heat). Then, after REconsulting the map outside the subway, we realized that the very tall, not so clearly mark building that was, in fact, right in front of us when the taxi dropped us off, housed our hostel on the top two floors. A good does of humor to test out the beginning of the trip...check. Once we went up and got a room, we thought we would just dump our bags off, only to find that we had huge, nearly floor to ceiling windows, westward facing, and the sun was in an explosively colorful sunset for the evening, so we had to take a few moments to enjoy the view and snap a few dozen photos. Then it was time to find some dinner.

We had walked past a place while in search of our hostel and had it in mind to go back to for dinner. When we got back there nearly an hour and a half later, there was a decent line forming out front. That hast to be a good sign, right? So we queued up behind the others and waited, discussing our adventure thus far and how exactly we thought we might go about ordering our dinner from the ALL Japanese menu that was before us outside the door or the place only to be beyond pleasantly surprised as the waiter handed us a menu in English just before he was ready to seat us! What luck! So we selected out items, took off our shoes, sat down and prepared to enjoy. We would later see towards the end of the trip that it was our luck that one member of the threesome would have to select a meal choice that he or she was not entirely thrilled with, unfortunately. This meal was my go at it. My dish wasn't bad, by any means, but theirs were better, I thought.

Excuse me, could you stand in for scale? I want to show them the sake bottle sizes

So, after finishing dinner and going for a bit of a wander around the neighborhood and into the local supermarket to check out what was different from what we could get at home, and to pick up some desserts and sake, we headed back to the room for some chill time and an early bed time for me. We had an early start planned for the next morning so that we could go see the local, world famous, fish markets in full effect and action.

Don't get lost in the mix of the fish market

I had the responsibility of the alarm, and thereby waking up to it (which is one of my least favorite things, but I did it man!) and so I woke up around 6:30am Monday morning and began rousing the troops for our early venture into the streets of Tokyo. It seemed to take ages for us to get ready and head out, but we finally made it to the markets around 8:30am and it was certainly a sight to see! The market place itself is a huge a sprawling mass of vendor after vendor selling every kind of locally available, super fresh fish imaginable. There are fish so fresh they are still moving when the guy cuts them up for sale! But, watch your step as you go because they a) drive on the opposite side of the road from us in the US and b) there is fishy water and fishy whatnots everywhere! After wandering the market for longer than a non-vendor should be allowed to and still come out with all limbs fully attached and barely scathed, we headed to find some food. And what better of a choice for brunch at the fish market district than sushi, right!? So we waited in line at one of the many sushi restaurants to be seated at the more than cozy "bar" to watch our chief prepare our made to order sushi right before us (it doesn't get much fresher than this folks!). We had a sushi plate and green tea and loads of pictures, then we were on our way to the next adventure. Off on the subway to find us some markets!

My attempt at artistic creativity

I believe that is legit, fresh sushi. Maybe...

We managed to find a very hippie shop where we scored a few choice items that were less Japan and more Indian/Thai/or hippie but sweet buys none the less. Then we found a nice little traditional Japanese restaurant and it was Steve's turn to have a not so great meal. And by not so great I mean that it actually stopped him in his tracks not even half way through stating "Um, yeah. I just can't do it." Poor guy. A for effort! In all honesty, it was pretty bad. After our interesting lunch, we made our way to one of the busiest pedestrian intersection crossing in all of Tokyo. It is famous. The area of town is quite busy, all the time, and after the lights change for the cars, all lights turn red and pedestrians then flood the intersection from all directions, scurrying like ants back to the hill. The sight can be truly marveled at and enjoyed from the second story of the Starbucks at one of the corners of this intersection. Then, as navigation is not amongst our strong suits combined between the three of us, we ended up in the wrong area of town and finally had to call it a loss as I was exhausted, so we headed back to the hostel room for a bit of a nap and more fun to come that evening.

Mid day photo from our room. Nice.

After waking to yet another glorious sunset in Tokyo and dragging our feet a bit (me, surely not) in getting up and going, we ventured out for some food and some fun. The plan: Japanese food for dinner and then find us some kind of fun. It turns out we found the fun first and meandered a bit for the food. We stumbled, more or less, over a giant mall that also had an intertwined theme/amusement park with it. We went on a few (very expensive) rides, walked around a few of the (very expensive) shops, then went in search of food. After a not so good run of food luck, we were tempted to give in and eat Western food, but we just couldn't justify it. So thankfully we found a sweet little spot that had some really tasty Japanese food...well, except for Tez's meal. She was less than impressed. It was her turn, after all. It's only fair! Then after dinner, we grabbed a few beers and headed back to the room for a shower, bath, and I passed out for the night far too early to be in Tokyo, but, I was soooo tired!

Palace, done. 

We all slept in the next morning, far later than we should have, but finally got up and moving and headed out on the subway to see some parks, gardens, and a palace. As none of us were overly impressed, and it was VERY hot and humid, we called it and decided to find a nice (air conditioned) indoor activity for a while. It took ages to make it to the next area (as it usually seems to when you are a) hot and b) taking the metro in a BIG city) and it didn't help that we got off to a late start, but we wanted to try to ride the roller coaster at the mall from the night before because it wasn't running then. Turns out, it wasn't running at all, due to need repairs. Would have been handy if we had actually noticed this the previous night. Oh well. So, slightly dejected, we opted for our next choice, which was an indoor activity: sumo tournament! What luck to be in Japan while one of the biggest sumo tournaments was in full force! And at this point of the day, we had missed all the light weights (so pun intended) and we were left to watch the big boys (yeah, I went there again) go at it! It was AWESOME! I quickly figured out the "rules" or kinda how it was goin down and was greatly amused and yet still confused for the remained of the matches. It was really sweet though!

Really? Live, real tournament style sumo in Japan? Winning!

After sumo we really wanted to hit up some traditional Japanese markets in hopes of finding some kind of trinkity Japanese whatnot to take home with us. But unluckily for us, we first found the Electronic City markets which was just stall after stall and store after store of electronical do-dads, of which I had no need. BUT, I did find a stand selling watches similar to the ones I was looking for, so I snagged a few and was quickly over the whole area and ready to move on. We wandered a few blocks and found a quickly closing, hugely sprawling market, but it still wasn't the traditional one we had our sights set on. As we wandered through this market, watching vendors pull in their goods and close up shop I began to realize that my hopes of getting a massage in Japan were fading fast. But, what cures the blues of a lack of massage seems to be food, so we sat down for some delicious sushi for dinner to eat away my cares. After dinner we had the brilliant idea to ride the subway,  get on, get off, change lines, get on, change lines, then see if we could make it back to our hostel. This changed to drinking while riding the subway and doing the above until we got lost and see if we could find our way back. Then when we resurfaced for more booze and came back down to find a platform with at least 10 to 12 foreigners, plus the three of us! We thought, wow, this must be where the foreigners go, we should follow them! So, we got on the train with them and our new plan was to ride it with them until the majority of them got off. This actually took quite a while, and as we were drinking during all this, we somehow forgot the plan to get off where they were going and decided instead to get off at the stop where the big pedestrian crossing is. Nothing sounded better at the moment than sitting in the middle of Tokyo watching people and drinking, so that's exactly what we did, for about two hours! Until well after the subway closed down.

Then, contrary to EVERYTHING that is the professional massage therapist in and about me, we somehow ended up at a bit of a dive of a massage parlor, on the second floor of some building somewhere in Tokyo. This was the fifth place that we had attempted to get a massage at and it seemed to be a success...but all things do when you are three sheets and in Tokyo. So, apparently we paid in advance (though I don't recall this) and then I only know from the second hand stories what happened in the other rooms, but I can say for certain that my massage was AMAZING. It was exactly what I needed! It was everything post massage that I didn't exactly need...Not to lay too much of other people's business out on the internet, let's sum it up with the statement that there are few places in Tokyo that have yet to see the contents of one of our party's stomach contents (whatever those contents might have been) all the way up until we finally made it back to the hostel as the metro system was coming back up and running. It was somewhere on the (very expensive) taxi ride back that Tez and I realized what else had been lost besides some tight muscles...10,000 yen. In case you're not keen to do the conversions I'll let you know, it's about 130USD, gone. On top of the payment for the massage. Ouch. But, lesson learned. Don't be as trusting elsewhere in the world as you are in Korea; not everywhere is as safe, kind, or non-shitty. Could have been worse. The ipod, camera, and other important items were still safely tucked inside my bag. So, upon returning to our room and tucking Tez into her bunk, I fumed for a while about the lost money then finally fell asleep.

As the responsible one in the party, I set my alarm and wake the rest of the party at a semi-sensible hour in order to get us a bit of sleep, some breakfast (of sorts) and then we are on our way to the airport, as it is about a 2 hour venture to get there via the subway...or a 300USD cab ride. So, two hour, 15USD metro ride it is! But, as we were not entirely sure where we were going, what pass we were to get, or which line would be the quickest way to get there, we were beyond thankful for the kindness and help of a guy and his friend at the metro station. Then, once on the train, the kindness of a woman to make sure we got off on the correct stop, then, the help of yet another guy on the last stretch of journey as we are sweating the fact that we just might not make it in time.

We thanked our final metro helper and then dashed off on the last train to catch the last (very expensive) Japanese taxi to the airport for the mad dash to the ticket counter to get our tickets and run through the first leg of security, then customs, then a DASH down 14 gates to our gate, with a whopping 3 minutes to our boarding time. I elected to go first through customs to make the run for the gate (as I am the only one of the three of us that has all my documents because I have been in Korea the longest) and hopefully catch the plan and beg the attendants to wait for my two friends to make their way through customs (as we had some issues on the way out of Korea, so this was not boding well for the venture through Japanese customs) and get on the plane back home.

Halfway through the run to the gate I had to stop and walk for a bit because I realized that I was, in fact, still heavily under the influence of alcohol and was probably going to toss my cookies (not unlike another member of my party) in the airport. I took a bit of a breather then began to run again until I could see that our gate (the last gate in the terminal, mind you) was still buzzing with people milling about waiting to board. They weren't even queueing up yet. That realization in and of itself was enough to make me puke. But, I refrained and instead turned around to collect my friends and some water for us and our TEN minute wait to begin to board. Really? Really? I mean, really? I just sweated it out on the last few stops of the train, on the ten minute taxi ride, the ticket counter wait, the run through security, the wait in line at customs, then the disgustingly nauseating run to the last gate of the terminal only to wait for at least ten minutes. Well, at least I got to adequately hydrate and take a bit of a fan break to cool off before we boarded the plane. And to bring everything full circle, in line to board, we saw five people that were on our outbound flight from Korea to Japan. Nice.

And all I could think was, ok, let's go home. I need some Korean food, some kimchi, and some sleep. I am ready to be home.

A short two hour (give or take) plane ride, an hour bus ride, a stolen taxi into town, and we were seated at a table at our favorite Korean restaurant ready for food, then off to an early bed time to be semi-well rested for our day back to work. A two-day work week no less. Oh yeah! So, here's to Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok), Japan, Tokyo, good friends and company, great views, city life, big spending, seeing sights, sumo tournaments, drunken Japanese massages, getting robbed, being lost, being the babysitter, sleeping on the streets, havin some sake, taxis that aren't really worth it but are, helpful locals that can really make your day, memorable photos that you have already forgotten or possibly never remembered, catching the plane, and getting exactly what you wanted. Here's to Japan and my long weekend with some great people! Kampai (Cheers!)!!

Real-I-zations

I will start by saying that this should have been posted much sooner...like at least a week ago. Maybe 10 days. But then people would think that I was posting regularly or into blogging or something like that and that would be a false representation of reality, so better late than never, here goes...

Time has really begun to fly here in Korea. I am missing more and more things at home (birthdays and events and the like) and am filling my time here with more things each week. I have taken to the travel thing again (me? Never!) and am spending the first few days of the week getting back to a balanced state just to jet set again the next weekend.

Work life at school is really great since the conclusion of summer camp. The schools that have come in are either very high level kids or there are kids that attended camp, so it's nice to see familiar faces again. I have been so busy with new friends and meeting people that I hardly have time to just sit down and watch a movie all the way through (trust me, for this, I am NOT complaining!). I say all this just to bring focus to the realization that this is exactly how I hoped Korea would be: busy, fun, full of new and interesting things, people, places, opportunities and experiences. But a few months ago, I didn't know if Korea would ever come back around to where it is now. Highs and lows. Highs and lows. Right now I am riding the high for all it's worth, reflecting on the fact that I am midway through my contract (within 5 days anyway) and all the things I have done and/or have yet to do, wanted to do that I haven't, and am still hoping to fit in before I go. I say "fit in" because things seem to go faster at the end of it (like the roll of toilet paper, for instance) than at the start and I can assure you that the beginning six months has flown by faster than expected. Here is my moment of reflection and realization (about myself, mostly) at the six month point:

There are certain things that I have settled into and hardly recognize as special, different, unique to my current situation, or just surprising now.  There are other things, that though seemingly small or meaningless or non-important or distinct, stand out to me regularly and make me smile or appreciate. I had a (seemingly doable) list of things to get done while here and upon taking stock of the time passed and the time remaining I realize that I will have to readjust the list and throw many an item off or push it onto another, future list. There are things that were not on this list that I have managed to accomplish, much to my dismay and surprise.

I can safely say that six months in I believe there are a few things in life that I will NEVER get used to. Like the sound of shuffling feet down hallways or on sidewalks resultant of either a lack of (be it) ability or simply will to pick one's damn feet up off the ground as one walks. Or the distractingly audible sound of smacking that is the result of a person chewing with their mouth open while eating. Or talking with said mouth full of said smacking food. Or the equally pleasing sound when said person (or any person or people for that matter) begins slurping their silently sip-able food or beverage item. Or uncovered sneezes and coughs. Or rinsed off hands after using the restroom or before eating. Or blatantly staring at someone and not understanding why there are reactions or repercussions for this. Or multiple layers of some sort in summer time temperatures. Or wearing clothes while swimming (in the sea more specifically). Or carrying an umbrella more days than not (even though it doesn't rain that often). Or timers on fans. Or squatty potties. Or no sinks in bathrooms. or not being able to flush my toilet paper. or super, super hard beds. Or a lack of carpeting. Or driving like you are a participant in the Indy500 even if you are just an average Joe. Or a lack of use of articles. Or not having a specific side that you know to go to while walking so that you will be out of the way of an on coming person (ie, you both move to your rights so then you will pass WITHOUT colliding).

But, here are a few things that I am pretty sure after six months that I could get used to on a long term basis. Parking on sidewalks. Passing cops over the speed limit. Breaking the law, blatantly, in front of cops. Being thought of as beautiful (even if they also think I'm fat). Kimchi. Soup and rice for lunch everyday. Cheap taxis. Living by the beach and hearing the ocean waves. Seeing the mountains every day. Cutting in line. Really nice (inexpensive) bus transport. Having festivals or something out of the ordinary to do every weekend (pretty much). Being able to tan on my roof top topless if I want to. The breeze off the sea. Regular long weekends and the trips that thereby ensue. Paid vacations. My new coworkers. The term "foreigner" as an everyday reference for myself. Being accepted in a highly anticipated way for being American.

All of this to say that will my six month mark rolling around in mere days I would just like to relay that though there are many things I have yet to do here in Korea, there are many things I never thought I would do that I have. There are many things that I have grown accustomed to that I never expected I would have the opportunity to. And there are many things that make me have a deep appreciation for their absence at other times and in other places in my life. Things are really good. Great in fact. Here in Korea now. And I am happy. And thankful. So for any that are still following this, know that my heart is in the place that I hoped that it would be during my time here. Things are good and I am well. Thought I have a new insight into what it is that I would like to do with the remaining time I have here before I move on to my next adventure. Here's to seeing if I can get some of these things crossed off the list!