Japan

I recently got the opportunity to spend a week vacationing in Japan. It was a really amazing trip, and came at just the right time. Things at work, as always, are high energy and high stress and we only get two weeks vacation a year. I’ve known ever since I had plans to move to Korea that visiting Japan was high on my list of places to go. It certainly met my expectations, both as a getaway from ‘it all’ and as a country that I have always wanted to visit.

I traveled there with my co-worker Jordan. Together we planed a trip which started with 3 days in Tokyo, a day hiking Mt. Fuji (see below) and 3 days in Kyoto (the formal Imperial capital of Japan, and thriving historical center).

While in Tokyo we tried to enjoy a budget vacation (hard to do in the world’s most expensive country!) So, we stayed in these capsule hotels. Pretty cool, eh? Basically like a hostel, but with a bit more privacy, tv included and all! It was a really neat and uniquely Japanese experience.

We ran all around the city, walking LOTS and just soaking in the city and all that it has to offer. Probably one of the highlight of Tokyo was when we were wandering around the  Harajuku area and happened upon these guys:

These greased out 40something year olds were rocking out to Japanese diner rock in the 100 degrees weather non stop. They were really into themselves, and even had a full length mirror where they kept dancing over to so that they could check out their hair and six packs. Ah, Yoyogi park, I love you!

Other highlights in Tokyo included eating delicious sushi at 8am at Tokyo fish market

YUM!

Checking out Shinjuku crossing both at day and at night. This multi lane crosswalk is thought to be the world’s busiest crosswalk, and it could easily supply hours of people watching

After Tokyo and our hike up Fuji Mountain we headed to Kyoto on the super fast bullet train, another unique Japanese experience. By the time we got to Kyoto we were feeling tuckered, but still eager to soak it all in. We enjoyed staying in a slightly more luxurious Ryokan (Japanese style hotel). We woke up early and tried to soak in as many temples and shrines as we could each day, but the weather was hot and my body exhausted so I spent the afternoons relaxing in the hotel, soaking in the onsen (hot springs public bath), watching BBC world news, and reading Siddhartha, which was the more than perfect book to meet the cadence of my travel. Retreat from chaos, spiritual symbolic journey up Fuji, reflections on my relationships, break in my daily routine. The book was thought provoking and beautiful in a myriad of ways.

Here are some photo highlights from Kyoto:

For a larger selection of photos from my trip click below:

Tokyo Album

Kyoto Album

Mt. Fuji

While I was in Japan last week on vacation my coworker, Jordan, and I hiked to the summit of Mt. Fuji. It was such an amazing experience! We left Tokyo around 11am and took a bus to Kawaguchi, the 5th station. It is about 2300m high and where most hikers start from. I was prepared as could be, with water and food for the next 24 hours and gear for the array of weather elements that I was sure to experience on the hike. We started up the mountain around 2pm and hiked till sunset when I needed a well deserved rest. We spend a few hours in a really expensive, packed hut where there was only room to lay flat on our back when it came time to (try to) sleep. We got up around 1am and hiked in the rain for the next 3 or so hours with our headlights guiding the way. At times the traffic of pilgrims making the ascent was so thick that we would have to stop and wait for our turn. After hiking through the rain in the dark we made to the summit shortly after 4am just in time for the break of dawn.

The view was spectacular. The sunrise breathtaking (or was that the hike which took my breath?) The experience exhausting in such a satisfying way. Unfortunately because of the rain in the morning my gloves were soaked and I couldn’t feel my fingers. The below freezing temps made it hard for me to enjoy much at the top beyond the sunrise. Jordan circumambulated the volcanic crater while I took a rest in a food hut and tried to regain feeling in my fingers and toes. Now all we had to do was get down!

The morning light was beautiful on the way down. It was hard at times to keep our footing on the steep pumiced mountain, but it went a lot faster then the way up. I can’t say that I’ve gotten sunburnt many times at 8 in the morning, but I guess when you’re 3776m high in the sky its bound to happen. Good thing around 9 I thought to put on sunscreen. About 20 hours after we started up the mountain we returned to the fifth station, exhausted and satisfied.

Click here to see more photos from my journey!

Samantha

My old roommate and closest co-worker friend is moving back to Canada in 2 days. This is the start of a large turnover at work between now and when I leave at the end of September. I am sad that she is leaving and have been wanting to spend a lot of time with her lately to make the most of the dwindling days. Last weekend we did just that. She pulled out her well-used Lonely Planet and concocted a three day itinerary that had us all over the city. It was lots of fun, of course!

Here is a photo tour of the weekends events:

Friday Night:

Dinner downtown, and a walk around Insadong, Korea’s traditional area in the heart of the city. After that we stopped at the ‘Beautiful Tea Museum’ which isn’t much of a museum, but does have a killer yogurt-green tea smoothie.

Next we took a taxi to N Seoul Tower. I had been there once before when I first arrived, but the view was quite different at night. There was a laser light show that we watched while we had an extensive talk about our favorite tv shows. A photo shoot in front of the ‘lock gates’ where people leave engraved locks attached to a chain link fence at the base of the tower. Overwhelming feelings of how much I am going to miss her uniquely Samantha personality. And lets not forget the hilarious cable car ride back down with ooohs and ahhhhs and giggles galore from the packed in group.

Saturday was full of surprises for me. I told Samantha that I would be up for anything she wanted to do. She took full advantage of this and planed the day not letting me know what we were doing till we got to each destination. Our first stop was the Martyr Museum attached to a Catholic cathedral. Memories of early Baha’i history were strong in my mind and I wished that I had a copy of Dawnbreakers here in Korea to read when I got back to my apartment. Such soul stirring sacrifices have been made throughout all the dispensations of God.

The next stop was Itaewon, the foreigner district and US military base. I usually tend to avoid this neighborhood, but when it comes to a taste of home (literally) its worth the venture every now and then. My favorite food ever are french fries and I have been missing them, so a big plate of fries was enough to make it worth it. The food was so good, but we made sure to save room for Coldstone across the street. Next was a quick stop at YongSan electronics mart where we both bought backup batteries for our digital cameras and Samantha walked barefoot down the decorative water fountain.

We hit up two museums after that, the War Museum and the National Museum. The war museum was well curated, but slightly depressing given the subject. There was a display of children’s art depicting war and peace that I really enjoyed viewing. The National museum is FREE and in a really beautiful and modern building. After 3 museums, though, we were museumed out!

Next stop was Meyong Dong. Our plans got changed up here because its monsoon season and the rain wouldn’t stop pouring. So instead of shopping at the late nigh markets we headed over to Omokgyo for a movie. We were exhausted by the end of the day and still had another whole day ahead of us.

Sunday our plans were altered again because of the heavy rain. Also, we were quite exhausted so it was a good thing that the agenda was less packed. We met up for lunch then went on a guided tour of one of the palace grounds. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t really take many photos on the tour. After that we wend for one last stroll down Insadong, Samantha’s favorite place in Seoul. I’m going to miss you Samantha! (click here for a link to the weekend’s facebook album)

Geography Itch

As plans for ‘life after Korea’ unfold I’ve found myself daydreaming quite a bit about what’s next. I’ve shared this with a couple of you, but here it is for everyone else. A while back I found myself thinking about how when I move back home and settle into California I will have more time to read, pray, cook, keep in touch with friends, teach myself new things, exercise….. Well, the scary thing was that before I left for Korea I was saying the same exact things. ‘When I’m in Korea I will have more time to….’ NO MORE EXCUSES! I must take control of my life now. And since I noticed the dreadful pattern of procrastination towards being proactive I’ve been much better at seizing the day.

One of the things on my list is keeping up with/continuing to hone my knowledge of Geography. I didn’t want to get rusty because I wasn’t in school anymore, I wanted to stay well read on the latest articles on the array of human geography topics and keep up with being able to locate stuff on the map.

To help with the latter I have found a really cool website that I want to share. So what if I am a geo-dork, online geography games are helpful and fun! So, the website is called Owl & Mouse and it has lots of cool map games that teach you the geography of our wonderful world. I have been particularly addicted to the online map puzzles where you can choose your continent and put the puzzle together country by country. You can pick whether you want political boundaries to show up, or just the outline of the continent. My roommate and I sit next to each other on the couch with our laptops racing to see who can complete the map the fastest (of course I have the ‘no boundaries’ handicap). So much fun!

Are you ready to get geographically literate? Ha.

Do you know who Muhammad is?

Today at work one of my coworkers told a story about how she resold an old text book online to a guy named Jesus. I find this coworker to be well educated and to be one who prides herself on knowing ‘whats up’. She was laughing at herself for not having known back then that people today with the name Jesus pronounce it with a spanish accent, different from how english speakers would say the Prophet’s name. She was commenting, though, on how she found it a bit odd for people to name themselves after a prophet. Myself and another coworker mentioned how this was also common with the name Muhammad. I was surprised when my coworker responded by asking ‘who is Muhammad?’ So we kindly informed her that Muhammad is the prophet founder of Islam, the second largest religion in the world with some 1.5 billion adherents. Not only that, but Muhammad (according to numerous google results when ‘most common name in the world’ was searched) is the number one most common name in the world.

This coworker said that she had gone to a Catholic school her whole life and got a bit defensive saying ‘when was I suppose to have learned that?’ I guess I just found it interesting (shocking?) more than anything, especially coming from my religious background where ‘progressive revelation‘ is a principal belief.

Then when I got home I saw in the news headlines that a new study had been conducted on religion in the US and some of the results were quite interesting, one of them being that 92% of those surveyed believe in God. Here is the link to the article to read more. I’m always interested to know what the ’spiritual pulse’ is on the world we live in.

Just some food for thought, I suppose.

Korean Folk Village

Last weekend I traveled a couple of hours outside of Seoul to Suwon, SK. There lies a heritage site turned into a replica of a traditional folk village. It was amazing! The place was huge. We spent over four hours there and only got to see about half of it. It was a real ‘hands on’ place with lots of learning through doing. It felt peaceful and it was really beautiful. On the grounds they have over 250 buildings, from a Nobleman’s house, to Commoners’ houses, blacksmith, basket and silk weaving and paper making sites, farming grounds, pottery kilns, ‘traditional food-court’, temples, shrines….And the people who worked there walked around in traditional garb.

We also got to see some really cool performances including the traditional drum dancers, tight-rope walking, seesawing, and equestrian acrobatics. We missed the reenactment of a traditional wedding ceremony, but I will just have to catch that some other time!

As always, I have even more photos….click here to see them.

MinkYung

Lately I have really been longing for friends to connect with. A relationship that feels natural and seemingly effortless. I have been trying to do this with people back home, but I find the distance to be daunting. My coworkers are great, but it can be too much to work and socialize with the same small group of people. I have some Korean friends living here and its always great when we get together, but they are all busy busy university students and live on the other side of the mega-city, its not often that we get to meet up. So, I’ve been feeling really blessed since I’ve met my new friend Minkyung.

There is this mountain behind my house with a really nice paved walking path. I have been trying to go there multiple times a week. Awhile back I was stopped by a Korean girl about my age who said she had noticed me and was wondering if we could walk together some time, so that she could practice her English. Of course I said yes. We quickly found that we were very similar and had a lot in common (love of traveling, time spent in India, ethnic foods, and boyfriends in the US, to name just a few things). Time spent with her feels so natural, its hard to believe that we have only known each other a couple of months. Its also really great to have a friend who lives in the same neighborhood. It feels really good to just be able to call her for dinner if I feel like it after work, or a walk late in the evening. I don’t really have to plan far in advance, or spend exorbitant amounts of time and energy to be social. Its been a blessing to meet her!

We spend a lot of our time together walking on the mountain, but we’ve also done some other cool things too.

A few weekends back we met up in Hongdae for Indian food and shopping. On the way to the restaurant we came across these performers who were were doing a Stomp-like sorta act on different recycled things. They were filled with energy and full smiles the whole time. Minkyung told me that she had seen them on the news before and they were a group of people who had been dissatisfied with their everyday lives and were looking for something that made them happy. So…they quit their day jobs, and this was the result!

We walked around the trendy/eclectic neighborhood doing some window shopping, then ate some AMAZING Indian food that neither of us could stop ranting and raving over.

The next day we met up for lunch. Minkyung took me to a really great neighborhood that I’d never been to before. We walked and talked and window shopped and ate really yummy Italian food. (Are you seeing a trend?)

To see more pictures from the weekend you can CLICK HERE. More to come on our adventures.

On the way home from the weekend hiking our bus stopped at a rest stop. There I found some very peculiar tape cassettes. Boy, am I curious to hear some of the sounds that would come out of these bad boys.

Mt. Soraksan

About a week and a half ago my coworker Jordan asked me if I wanted to go hiking that weekend with him. I was hesitant to say yes because I’d been so busy with Martha’s visit, then our trip to Busan. He had booked a trip with a friend through Adventure Korea, the same tour group that Samantha and I went to North Korea with. Unfortunately though, his friend was unable to go last minuet so the trip would be free for me. I couldn’t pass up a free weekend away! My daddy taught me better than that.

Mt. Soraksan is located about four hours north of Seoul. We left early in the morning on Saturday. I was dozing uncomfortably on the bus (the guy behind me had a loud voice, and I am not used to having to block out english, plus my neck had nowhere to rest….you know, one of those rests). Anyways, the point being that I kept waking up slightly irritated, but whenever I would take a look out the window I would see the Korean countryside and be struck by its beauty. I’d soak it in for a minute then find my heavy eyes closing again.

The mountain was absolutely beautiful. The hiking was challenging, but in a much better way then Bukhansan. When I hiked Mt. Bukhan in the fall I was out of practice and mentally unprepared. The hike was just as tough mentally as it was physically. I kept wanting to turn back, but my friend kept telling me I couldn’t. Both my body and mind were calling for an end. Last weekend, though, there were no thoughts of turning back. It wasn’t even an option, I would reach the peak. Physically, though, it was tough. But I would take that any day over the mental challenge! Well worth it when we got to the top, the view was spectacular!

There were lots of Buddhist temples at the base of the mountain, and on the way up.

Busan, SK

The weekend after Martha left I got the chance to visit South Korea’s second largest city, Busan. The city is located on the coast about 3 hours south of Seoul via the KTX (KTX equals super fast Asian train). I went with a group of about ten, half coworkers, half Korean friends. We had a three day weekend for Buddha’s Birthday, and so jumped on the opportunity to get out of the mega city, even if it was just to head to the second largest in the country (which is,however, notably smaller).

It was challenging for me to travel with such a large group. I tried really hard to be ultra flexible, despite its difficulties at times. I tried to just go with the flow of the group, or venture off on my own. We were lucky that our hotel was in such a great location, only 5 minutes from the beach, so it was easy to get away but still be near by. I did want to participate in the group activities, but when no decisions were reached via any sprit of consultation it was tough. Also, while its no secret that my co-workers enjoy the ‘night life’ and all the debauchery involved, I guess I just assumed (wrongly) that they would want to see more than the Starbucks and club scene of the town. In the end it worked out, though, and I had a good weekend. We did do a couple really cool things, namely visiting the best aquarium that I’ve ever been to, and checking out Busan’s famous fish market. I hope I get a chance to go back before I leave to check out more of the place.

Here are some photo highlights, plus a video of us eating raw (moving) octopus at the fish market. Yep. Enjoy!

Hum, not sure why Robyn and I are smiling. I guess its because we didn’t realize that there is only so much glass between that shark and us….dun dun dun….

On a hike with Peter and Jordan

At Hayundae beach

Bustling fish market

The ladies at the warf