The soul of Seoul

There is this very nifty law in South Korea that states that every high-rise building has to have a piece of art in front of it. The city being a bit of a concrete jungle, this has led to Seoul being the most extensive outdoor art gallery on earth. Without exaggerating. It actually seems like people have taken this law into their own hands, and it is hard to walk one block without seeing a sculpture of some kind. There is a park in Seoul playing host to 200 bizarre sculptures from all over the world.

Unfortunately, there Just Wasn’t Enough Time to go see it. We also didn’t have time to visit any museums, and I was itching to stop at the Warhol exhibition, the museum of contemporary art, modern art, folk museums..

We did have time to stop at an intersection on the way to The Next Stop, where we played on the sculptures for a while before dragging our sleep-deprived bodies to whoknowswhere. And looked through many gallery windows for artworks that challenged every available media previously used to create something.
(My favourite one was a 2m tall picture of the Alice in Wonderland rabbit, using different shades of 2cm zip units as “pixels”)

Aside from the bazillion sculptures and museums, the theatre and film industry also seems to be pumping with life. Walls are littered with poster upon poster of the latest Korean musical, ballet, film or whatever stage production. And such variety! Seoul alone has 47 universities, a few of them directed at the arts, and I’m sure students creativity is limited only by their imagination.

On our first night, despite honorable intentions to get to bed early (having been awake since 5am that morning, and traveling around quite a bit), we ended up at a Live Jazz Bar after dinner. We saw a three-man-band called J-Story, who played the most irregular jazz I’ve ever seen. At times I was convinced that each of the musicians were just jamming to their own tunes (piano, double bass and drums), but then they’d come together in a perfect off-beat, grin at each other, and rock on.

Luckily, they stopped playing just after midnight, so we caught the subway home to Euljiro-4-ga, exit 4, right turn by the light blue sign, down the alley that smelt of decaying organic matter and into the unmarked side of Traveler’s A guesthouse, where late-night debates in Japanese would be the sound to which I’d fall asleep.

It's a big, big world.

I have tons to write about: Weekends in Okayama, Fukuyama and my first trip to Hiroshima; graduations, birthday celebrations and getting off at wrong train stations. But I will leave that for now, let it grow hazy, with only blurry photos to remind me of those times. And while it is still fresh in my mind and whispered in the dark circles under my eyes, I will write about Korea.

With no spring holiday to look forward to and no desire to give in to Japan's National Rip-off (golden week 400% increase in plane ticket prices), Vicky and I decided to go on a short holiday to Seoul in South Korea, a mere hour in the air from Hiroshima airport. Now, in this new life of mine, holiday does not equal “a period of rest”. Closer to the truth would be “long days, late nights, sensory overdose and rushing from one spot to the next”. As with my weekends, I return from my holidays even more exhausted than I was at the start. Is this the live fast, die young thing I’ve been reading about? It’s the symptom of the problem that there just isn’t enough time on earth.

Now that I’ve justified that sleeping is waste of time, it’s time to reporto on Korea.

After 8-9 months in Japan, I can finally walk down a street and make out a word or two on posters, banners and advertisements. I can ask basic questions if I get lost, or if I don’t understand. It’s not quite swimming, but it’s definitely treading water.
Then I went to Korea, and I was back to square one.

Wait. Time out. Stop... the boat, Mr. Wonka. I need to retrace my steps. As I was walking down the empty stone roads in the Jongmyo Royal Shrine, I started mentally composing my blog entry. I only just now remembered that stroll of thought. So here goes.. it went something like this:

While I was living in Pretoria, I was completely fascinated with the outside of a certain fruit & veg shop, which soon became my favourite. The green glass panes were covered in strange scribbles which I thought of as alien hieroglyphs. It became my favorite alphabet to look at, and still is. Little did I know that, less that a year later, I’d be walking down the streets of the country that uses that alphabet, assaulted by its lines and circles, drowned in neon miscomprehension.

(Insert photo)

That’s how far I got. But really, the language is even more impenetrable than Japanese. Even if you have a Korean street name or local dish written out in roman letters.. your pronunciation is so far off, you just confuse them even more. Japanese also helped a bit, as we found out just after we booked into the hostel and the Russian owner could not speak a word of English or Korean, but managed alright in broken Japanese. In fact, the Japanese influence is visible everywhere. More than half of the kids in our hostel were from Japan, shopfronts had signs like ようこそいらっしゃいませ！ and taxis boasted 日本語O.K. It did make me feel a little bit more at home. Even with Japan being the major source of tourism and influence, there is still an underlying bitterness towards Japan, stemming from Japan’s annexation of Korea from 1910-1945, and the harsh rule that ensued. In fact, there are many fights still going on today, such as what the name of the sea between Japan and Korea should be, which country owns the Takeshima islands (or Dokdo Islands, according to S.Korea) and Japan refusing to extend warcrime compensation or apologies to the South Korean comfort women that were obviously scarred during the colonial rule. (Even today, they still protest once a week on front of the Japanese Embassy in S.K, but are skillfully ignored).

I’m digressing, but it was really interesting to see another thriving Asian country while having Japan as a reference. If you take fashion as an example, it was a breath of fresh air to not see bags adorned with stuffed animals, keitais without 1kg of dangly pink things, no cartoon characters on everything from trucks to tampons, to see boys dressed like boys (as opposed to the furry jackets and hairclips the Japanese androgenous sport). Who knows why Japan cannot grow up, and even adults are caught up in the “kawaii” (cute) culture. SK seems more mature, sensible and level-headed than Japan.

In fact, if I have to sum up my impression of South Korea (wait, who am I kidding, I don’t know shit about South Korea. Spent 4 days in one city.) Okay, my impression of Seoul is.. an intelligent fusion of art and technology. This is dynamic Korea.

Moenie Huh se nie.

Ek wens nogsteeds ek kan kappies maak. Maar nie op hierdie keyboards nie.

Anyways. Dis sneeu vandag en dit freak my uit. Wou net vir iemand vertel. Ek het gedog dis as van die fabrieke of 'n moerse trop duiwe wat deur 'n vliegtuig enjin gevlieg het. Maar nee, dis sneeu. En dis warm. Weird.

Dangerous Individual Training

When the PE teacher changed his purple raincoat and ski-goggles for a black suit jacket, I knew that something was going to happen at school.
Then, Kyoto Sensei turned off al the lights, and told me I could go home at 4:00, because they will be having a meeting.
Half an hour later, all the teachers walked out of the teacher's room, video cameras and long sticks in their hands. My JTE must have noticed my amused looks, because he came over and explained: "These people are here for.. dangerous individual training."

They re-enacted an entire scene. Half an hour ago, I was sniggering and snorting at the articles on watkykjy, and now I had a live re-enactment of dangerous individual threats. A good day.

Someone rang the buzzer. The Kyoto Sensei walked slowly to go open it. As if he didn't know what was waiting for him. Everyone pretended to be busy for 20 seconds, and then.. the whistle blew.
The jacket-clad PE teacher and the short teacher both grabbed their holding sticks (think of a metal halfmoon attached to a long stick - ideal for pinning bad guys onto walls - but still big enough for them to slip out of, haha, didn't think about that now did you!) and ran into the hallway. The JTE ran after, holding the camera.

There were a few sounds of commotion.. and they returned to the staffroom bearing triumphant smiles.

This training was not only exciting, but also practical. Now we are just waiting for a dangerous individual to come to Japan, trek through the mountains, make it to this small town, climb up the long hill to my school, make it past the video cameras outside, get through the video camera'ed front door (maybe disguised as a lady selling apples) and disturb the general peace.
Or maybe one of the townsfolk will go crazy.
We can only hope.