A Light at the End of the Tunnel
I again profusely apologize that it’s been a good month since I last wrote. I’m not sure where the time goes, but it does. Anyway, let’s see. Second week of April was my ‘quarter century’ birthday. It’s funny how at home I feel so old compared to everyone, but here I’m a ‘baby’ relatively, so I enjoyed my friends’ envy at my so-called ‘young’ age ( I still feel old, don’t worry).
My birthday was on a Thursday, but luckily it was over an exam period, so I had a light work load (2 hours of teaching!). We had a very chilled night of drinks at the back gate of the university followed by kam-ji-tan (pork soup), which was delicious. On Friday night we met up with some friends for some Indian food, and Katie and Arlo made me an amazing layered butterscotch and chocolate cake.
Saturday was the ‘big’ day so to speak. Sharon and Priya took me out for my first real pedicure and manicure in the early afternoon, which was very girly and entertaining…I’m apparently not very good at staying still, so they had to re-do a few of my nails as I kept smudging them, but other than that, it was a success. After our mani/pedi session, we went shopping for a birthday outfit. Being that I am horrible at shopping in Korea, Sharon and Priya did most of the work. They convinced me (rightly so if I may say) that a blue seventies-style tube-top dress was good as my ‘birthday suit’, and Priya found me some dangly earrings. To top it off Sharon and Priya bought me an awesome necklace. If you’re wondering, don’t worry, I’m still more of a jeans and skate shoes type of girl, but it was fun to dress up for the evening.
I hurried home to start preparing for my party. Jeremy was the boyfriend of the year. He helped clean the apartment, ferried patio furniture from friends’ roofs to ours, and helped make the food too. I had decided that since it was my birthday I wanted to have all the foods I loved, so I made mini-cheesecakes, chocolate-covered strawberries, taco dip, and home made pizza. Jeremy made up a cheese platter and about 100 jello shots.
The party started off well, and Katie soon took over the pizza-making as she is much better at rolling dough than I am. The apartment was soon bustling with all our co-workers and friends, and the food was a huge success, including the artichoke dip Jess made and the birthday carrot cake Jenna made. The night was made even more special when a group of about 8 of my friends presented me with a beautiful pendant that they designed for me and had made from our jeweller friend, Misub. We headed down to the bar for a quick drink and Jeremy and I called it a night as we were pretty exhausted. It was a great party, although the clean-up the next day was a little less to be desired.
The following week was awesome as Jeremy finally (finally!) decided to join me in the mindset of “let’s leave Korea!”. It was such a happy day for me. We decided that we’ve had enough and are leaving in September. We handed in our resignation letters on Friday, much to our boss’ Korean-esq grumblings. We then gleefully set off to catch a plane to Tokyo for a 4 day weekend.
We got to the Busan airport early Saturday morning and had a 2-hour ordeal going through multiple security checkpoints, interviews, and bag searches. It was all very redundant and very inefficient (i.e. very Korean). We were glad to get to finally get onto the plane and head off to the land of the rising sun.
We met up with Caitlin in Tokyo. It was so amazing to see her face, it was March since I last saw her last. We were immediately amazed at the positive contrast Japan is compared to Korea. The streets were clean. No one horked on the streets, no one pushed us, swore, spoke loudly on their cell phones (actually no one spoke on them at all, apparently it’s rude to do so). There was greenery everywhere…and healthy, loved cats and dogs lovingly doted on by their owners. Our eyes were again opened to the fact that Korea is just a place you want to stay for any amount of time when there are so many beautiful cultures out there.
We spent 4 days reveling in the beauty that is Japan. The people were all kind and generous - elderly men tipped their hats to us, women stopped on the streets to let us pet their dogs - and thanked us when we took pictures of their dogs!
The guesthouse where we stayed was on a charming little street, and the owner was one of the most kind and generous men I have ever met. Since we are friends with Caitlin and Kevin, he let us stay for a ridiculously low price, and he even ended up driving to the train station on our last day since it looked like it may rain.
Getting back to the first day, we spent the afternoon wandering around some of the different areas in Tokyo. We went to the electronic district, and then headed back to Caitlin’s hood to eat some Indian (yes, on our first night in Japan, we had Indian). We caught up with Kevin and planned the rest of our time in Tokyo.
On Sunday we got up and went to Asakusa, where we saw a temple and learned some interesting facts about what women do and don’t do in their kimonos from a little Japanese man. We saw an impromptu Samuri/ninja show on the street and had a lazy beer with endamame and chicken skewers on the street. We made our way to the Imperial Palace where we lounged on real grass (amazing compared to Korea where what little grass there is is not meant for lounging or enjoyment of any kind) and watched children actually playing and laughing (also amazing compared to Korea where children spend all daylight hours tucked away in school rooms).
After the Imperial Palace, we looked up and realized we could see Tokyo Tower from the gates. We looked at it, and using our not-so-proficient math skills decided it would be about a 15-20 min walk there. Two and a half hours later we had finally made it. The view from the tower was awesome, it seemed that Tokyo was never-ending.
After walking for a good 10 hours, we decided it was time for dinner and stumbled into an authentic-style Japanese restaurant. We ordered beer, which was the coldest, most refreshing beer I have ever tasted in my life. We had fresh tuna with avacado, tempura, fresh tuna spring rolls, and of course, soba noodles.
By the time we got back to the guesthouse, our legs were aching from walking all day. Although it wasn’t that late we said an early good night, and set our alarms for 4:30am so that we could get up in time to see the Tsujiki fish market in action.
The Tsujiki fish market is known as the ‘birthplace of sushi’, and it takes in over 15 million USD daily in sales. It basically supplies the entire city with all seafood-related products, and the profits from the market could relieve some country’s debts pretty darn quickly.
It was an amazing sight to see, despite the blearly eyes. The tuna were massive (pretty sure some weighed more than I do), and the efficiency with which the workers cut the tuna is ridiculous.
After touring the market for a couple hours, we decided it was time for a 8:30am sushi breakfast and headed to a stall just outside of the market for a break. After breakfast we were all in a food/sleep-deprived food coma, so we headed back to the guesthouse for an early siesta.
After our nap we headed out for the alloted 15 minutes of shopping that Caitlin is able to withstand (I managed to buy a scarf), and then headed to a little hole-in-the-wall “pub” that Caitlin had frequented before. Instead of ordering directly from the wait staff, we ordered our food through a vending machine that dispensed tickets. We then took our tickets to the bar staff and sat down while they brought us sushi, noodles, and all-you-can-drink-in-an-hour sake. The joy of sake was not lost on us, as after 2 years of soju, sake was like heavenly syrup.:)
After our sake marathon, we went to head home, but were soon stopped by a Japanese woman who wanted foreigners to hang out with her American boyfriend (who didn’t speak Japanese). We joined them for a few beers and a shot (which was difficult to order as they didn’t understand ‘shot’), and then headed back to the guesthouse. At the guesthouse we chilled with Kevin and Caitlin and then headed to bed.
On our last day, we didn’t have much time, so we went out for our last meal for the traditiona Edo food (I think it was called moojayki), and big cabbage pancake-like things. Both were delicious, although I was partial to the avacado pancake, as the moojayki, as Caitlin pointed out, looked ‘a little like vomit’….still tasty though.
We had our tearful goodbyes and hopped on our plane back to Korea, now considering the idea of moving to Japan in September.
The work week back after Japan was fairly uneventful, and this past weekend I spent in Daejon with the girls for our 3rd laser/girls weekend, which was as usual, a lot of fun.
We’re coming up to the weekend again, and I’m pretty excited considering the fact that we only have 4 more full-time teaching weeks until exams, which is then followed by a month-long vacation in Vietnam (we just bought our tickets yesterday)!!!! After that, it’s smooth sailing as we have 3 weeks working 4 hours a day after vacation and then we are heading out of Korea…wherever the winds take us, or wherever offers us a job!
Sianara!
