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Stranger in a Strange Land Newsletter: February 2006

Dear Readers,
They call Japan the Land of the Rising Sun. I didn't find it to be such. The sun didn't seem to rise there any more often than anywhere else I've been, even Norway... Readers, it's good to be back. It's been over two months since I last wrote my monthly newsletter in the middle of January in Seoul, South Korea, just before going back to Japan. I had lived in Japan for eight months in 2004 and this time, over a year later, I stayed for a month. Then I went back to Korea for a couple weeks before moving on to my next destination: the Land of Smiles, Old Siam, Thailand!

Yes, I've been in Thailand for over two weeks now. And not only is it a country I've never been to, but it's a country that I did very little research on before arriving. I felt ashamed that it wasn't until I was getting off the plane that I asked someone, "How do you say, 'Thank you,' in Thai anyway?" But it has been an interesting experience watching how my Thai and impression of the culture has developed in a short time in the country. One can really just step off the plane and begin learning almost entirely on the street. I'm basically fluent now.

Okay, no, not at all, but I have picked-up a bit and I can say, "Where is the bathroom?" which I think is a major threshold in language learning: a whole world opens up to you after that. Anyway, I only tease you in mentioning all this Thai stuff: I'll really get into that in the next newsletter and for now talk about my time in Japan and my last weeks in Korea.

Actually, as I write in March for this February Newsletter it will be largely about January and I'm even going to start with the last two days of December: Remember how I got kicked-out of the place I was staying in the Jirisan Mountains a mere twenty-four hours before I intended to leave ("Give me the key!" and five minutes later: "Eli, do you have a place to stay tonight?")? As a result of that occurrence I went to Busan a day earlier than I intended and was able to meet up with my friend a day earlier as well.

She and her friends were celebrating New Year's Eve together a day early (New Year's Eve Eve, as it were) because the New Year is actually very much a family holiday in Korea, as it is in Japan as well. Most of them would be with their families on New Year's Eve except my friend who is actually from Jeju Island but studying in Busan. It was a nice little party where they were celebrating the new year and their birthdays: in Korea their ages go up by one year every new year regardless of when their birthday is during the year. And just to finally answer the whole question as to why one's Korean age is always one or two years more than one's Western age: they also count the first nine months in the womb as one year. Like the Christian calendar there is no year "0."

Anyway, we had a birthday cake and then played a traditional Korean card game with a decidedly untraditional sounding name: "Go, Stop." They were completely different cards than the European card deck: each one half the size of the cards I am familiar with and twelve different lovely, but difficult to spot, suits rather than four. The amount of suits was nothing compared to the complexity of the rules and even the objective of the game. Anyway, I loved it and wasn't half bad at it considering I largely didn't know what I was doing.

Then the next night was of course New Year's Eve and I spent the day with my friend and saw sights such as Jalgachi Market, Busan's famous fish market right on the water. There were some animals that really did look like monsters: these huge spiky crabs for instance. The most disturbing thing might have been eels which I believe were skinned alive but were certainly sitting writhing in a pile. And I am quite certain they were still alive when they cooked them because a family next to us ordered a dish with those eels, cooked right at their table as Korean dishes often are. But usually you couldn't see the meat moving as it was cooked in wonderful seasoning. Anyway, I'm sure it tasted good.

A week and a half later I was on my way to Japan again. Those who have read this newsletter and heard me speak of Japan may find this trip to be masochistic. Doch! (German for "au contraire") I was wary of my trip to Japan but I planned on having fun with friends, planned on being careful with money and everything else, and I was curious how Japan would be for me after all this time. It was pretty shitty. No, as I attempted to indicate above: Japan is just another country. Oh, sure, it is very special. But so is every other country, common! Seriously, I enjoyed my time in Japan, this time, just fine. I don't like a lot of the ways Japan does things, but I have a lot of good friends in Japan, from Japan, and planning on going to Japan and I can't really bash the old place: it's part of me.

I mean, if you are more concerned with truth or a real sense of humor than superficial, short-termed, shame driven, social niceties, then yes, you will have some trouble in Japan. But every country has its pro's and con's, you know? I spent all my time in Tokyo and Osaka, staying with and visiting friends. I intended to just be there for a couple weeks but it ended-up being more like four weeks. And one advantage of this was being able to see the Chinese New Year celebrated in Yokohama, the famous port city outside of Tokyo with the largest China Town in Japan. There were dancing dragons, fire crackers (maybe they had the fireworks at night), and creepy people with far too much make-up dressed in traditional aristocratic Chinese attire. The animals were the best part, that is the colorful dragons skillfully and sometimes amusingly dancing around (some controlled by one person and other extremely long ones controlled by dozens) and the dogs. I began to notice a lot of people walking and carrying dogs, many of them dressed-up, around at the extremely packed event in the streets. I soon realized it was, in fact, the Year of the Dog, so that made sense.

During my time in Japan, I stayed with new friends who I had just met in Korea and I stayed with an old friend. I have to extend my gratitude to all those people: without them I couldn't have fulfilled one of my main goals in visiting Japan: not to spend too much money. Seriously, I had some gracious hosts and my heart goes out to them. I also was able to meet a couple former students who were wonderful to see and I was even able to meet some friends in Osaka who I first met in Germany back in 2003. That's impressive we've kept in touch and I suppose it'll be even more impressive if all these people I meet I'm able to keep in touch with and visit in 2020. But let's not get ahead of ourselves: one year at a time.

I did go back to Korea one more time to attend to some unfinished business: Have you ever eaten a raw hot pepper without crying? Well, until about a month ago I hadn't but people in Korea do it all the time as a pleasant side dish. The last time I bit into a raw hot pepper I was in Jamaica Plain, Boston, I was five years old and I thought it was a sweet bell pepper. I was wrong. While I was in Korea, having learned to tolerate spicy food a little more, I promised myself I would try to eat one of these peppers again. Though my eyes might have watered a little, I did avoid bawling them out this time, and in fact ate the whole darn thing. There were a few other little things I wanted to do in Korea before moving on to my next destination: Thailand, as I mentioned.

I'll tell you about that soon. You all take care. Thanks for reading this. Feel free to write back with questions and stuff like that.


All the best to you,
Eli

And a bit of important information: Did you know that "popo" means "buttocks" in German, "waterfall" in Korean, and "police" in American English slang? It's true. Well, except the Korean one: it would be more accurately transliterated as "popok" but at the end of a syllable the "k" sound in Korean is almost pronounced but not quite. The would be "k" is more like a glottal stop, a sound that exists but is not very common in English only found in the word "uh-oh" and when spelling-out consecutive "ee" sounds: "ef-ee-(glottal stop)-ee-tee," for the word "feet." You feel it? But if that "k" sound is followed by an open syllable (a syllable that begins with a vowel) then it moves forward to that syllable and is fully pronounced. One of my Korea friends is named "Bok-Yung." But it is more pronounced "Bo-Kyung" which I think sounds a lot less dirty. Of course, this linguistics stuff is all assuming I'm not mistaken, and I very well could be: I'm no language nerd or anything.