Stumbling Through Busan: A Retrospective

This past weekend was one of our few long weekends off from teaching, thanks to Buddha’s Birthday, which was on Friday. After a week filled with drama club (better and better!) and an open class in which I was silently judged by my students’ mothers, I found Zach, a friend from the college salad days, and Brandy, and we set off for Busan. I had failed to make any arrangements for this long weekend far enough in advance, but Zach was planning on playing in an ultimate frisbee tournament on the beach. I decided to join him, against my better judgment, and Brandy came on board after realizing that she too had nothing else to do.

So after a meal of ddokgalbi (spicy chicken with rice dumplings and vegetables; I could eat it for days) we hopped on a train. There were no seats left on this train, mind you, so we all did our best hobo impressions and sat in the very back of the caboose (can you still call it a caboose?), which was not as fun as it might sound. Mostly it was sweltering hot. Anyways, we got to Busan, where we discovered that the whole city is actually in another dimension and you can only get to it by traveling through the Stargate.

Somebody get Kurt Russell.

After entering this mysterious Busan dimension, we quickly found a place to stay for extra-cheap, got some pizza (pizza does exist in the Alternaverse), and met up with some friends on the beach to have some drinks and wander around. Then we went to bed, and woke up Saturday for some frisbee.

My history with ultimate frisbee is not long or pleasant. Before this weekend I’d played maybe three times, and each and every time I got hit in the face with the disc, usually in the nose, once in the teeth. One time I got hit so hard that my nose began to bleed. Essentially, I have been conditioned to be afraid of a frisbee that is heading in my direction. I usually imagine it has teeth and huge claws that are going to tear my face apart the second I try to catch the thing. I drew you a little picture so you can better understand where I’m coming from:

That is indeed my blood you see trickling from its fanged maw.

Naturally, I had to overcome my fear of flying circles of plastic in order to have a good time on Saturday. It wasn’t easy, as you can imagine, but I managed to do just that for the most part. That might be because I was more afraid of the jagged rocks that were hiding under the sand of the beach than I was of the frisbee. I even managed to not get hit in the face by the disc across three whole games of ultimate, which I count to be one of my greatest accomplishments in Korea so far. My team went 3 and 0, too, although that was really through very little help from yours truly. I mostly ran around and provided someone for the slow guy on the other team to amuse himself with (but I did it well!). Also, it was pouring rain by the end of the day, so we all wound up covered from head to toe in sand.

That’s where jimjilbang came in. Jimjilbang is the Korean term for a public bath house, which is a place where you nude up and get clean in a big room with a bunch of other dudes. It’s better than I make it sound. In this particular jimjilbang there was a hot tub, a cold tub, a hotter than hot tub that made me feel like a lobster five minutes before meal time in Maine, a sauna, and a steam room. After a day of sprinting barefoot on sand, all of these things were pretty stellar. It wasn’t enough to work out the knots in my legs that have been making climbing stairs a Herculean task for the past two days, but it was a start. Add to that the hilarity of one of the other nude patrons of the jimjilbang trying to get us to leave because we were pretty much sand monsters, even as an employee told us to just go on in, and you have yourself a pretty fine first trip to a public bath house.

Anyways, the rest of the weekend consisted of a crazy post-frisbee party featuring some seriously intense Jenga action, and noraebang (I told you, you can’t stay away), followed by a Sunday that featured lots of exhausted trudging and the only halfway decent Mexican food I’ve seen in Korea. Looks like someone finally figured out the whole meat/cheese/beans combo is what really makes it tick. We also stopped by the World’s Largest Department Store, which was… well, it was very big, and it was a department store. Not sure what else you want from me on that one. On the way back, we tried three different routes before Brandy and I finally gave up the cheaper bus route and took the train, where Brandy got her fingers slammed in the bathroom door “for awhile” (that’s how she put it) and had to go to the hospital on Monday when they turned black. If you’re reading this Brandy, I hope your fingers have returned to a somewhat normal hue.

SO INTENSE.

While I didn’t see terribly much of Busan on this first effort, I did see enough to know that it’s probably the prettiest city I’ve been to so far in Korea. The whole beachfront area is gorgeous and shiny and filled with these awkward casinos which Koreans aren’t allowed into because it’s illegal for them to gamble (okay for us foreigners though; apparently the law cares not for our moral compass). I missed out on Korea’s largest fresh (read: live) seafood market this time out, but next time that is Stop #1.

This is where we played frisbee. Unfortunately the cones mark out a field, not a hidden-jagged-rock-free zone.

I realize that I have been totally crapping out on the whole “Short Creative Nonfiction” angle of this blog lately (okay, for at least a month), and I do apologize for that. I would make a go of it today, but I’m still exhausted from the weekend. Coming up, though, a possible MIME FESTIVAL! and an overnight excursion at a gorgeous Buddhist temple near Busan. Maybe I’ll have a more specific story to tell after those adventures. ‘Til next time, dear readerssszzzzzzzzz…

A Post About the Time I Learned a Lot About Korean Politics (Plus Some Other Stuff)

So it happened again last night. Around one in the morning, after being lulled into a blissful slumber by falling rain outside my window, I was once again awoken by sex noise. I wasted no time in turning on my music to drown it out, because I’m incompetent enough to have neglected to get earphones since the last go-round with these sounds. The music, however, didn’t stop the neighbors from waking me up again, an hour later, with raucous laughter. So raucous, in fact, that it sounded like they were inside my room and I started freaking out in my half-awake state that there were laughing people watching me sleep, which I didn’t know was one of my biggest fears until this morning around two. Anyways, this post isn’t about sex noise, or my phobias. It’s about last weekend’s increasingly random adventures and the pretty pictures I took to remember them by.

Saturday is the day that I normally have my Korean lesson with other English teachers, led by Ah Young. This Saturday, seonsaengnim (can’t remember what that is? Do your damn homework.) decided she’d rather take us hiking. Our lesson, therefore, was to figure out how to find the mountain we were to climb by asking bus drivers or passersby which buses went where. The difficulty was mitigated somewhat by a list of buses which would be surefire hits, but as it turns out this list was a pack of lies (somewhat expectedly, maybe, given Ah Young’s propensity for mischief). So I managed to find the mountain and be on time, but only by finally breaking through my embarrassment at my crappy Korean skills and asking the driver of the 616 why he wasn’t going where I wanted him to. After removing myself from this mystery bus I was able to easily navigate the rest of the way, partially (okay, completely) because I saw Ah Young sitting on the bus that would take me the rest of the way.

So we climbed the mountain, which was easy enough, at least for me, because I decided to wear shoes. Ah Young and another student, Trevor, decided to show Melissa and I how badass they were and hiked the last two-thirds of the way up barefoot. Why was I not badass enough to climb the mountain barefoot? Let’s just say that if you present me with a choice between A) Blisters, and B) No blisters, I will choose B every time.

The climb up the mountain was extremely rewarding, by the way. This particular mountain is home to part of a reconstruction of the ancient Daejeon Fortress Wall, which used to protect the town on all sides from various invaders. Korea used to be invaded roughly five times a week from all sides, so I’m assuming this wall was pretty useful.

Nope, no invaders here. Thanks, wall!

Anyways, after the mountain adventure, we went to check out the Buddha’s Birthday Parade by City Hall (even though the actual holiday isn’t until Friday). Unfortunately, we were all super-hungry and decided to stop off at an awesome buffet and stuff our faces for an hour and a half before searching out the parade. Naturally, the parade was over before we found it. But we did get some balloons and free gimbap from friendly monks (it’s like sushi, but it has eggs, pickle, and ham inside instead of fish)!

Anyways, on to the main event: Sunday. Ah Young informed me that she would be driving past my neighborhood on the way to pick some stuff up in a tiny village out in the country, and since hardly anyone ever comes near my neighborhood if they can help it (I am very far from most things in Daejeon) I asked her if she was going to come visit me. So she picked me up Sunday afternoon and we went to this village, where I learned that driving down back country roads in Korea is roughly one million times more awesome and dangerous than driving down back country roads in America. See, in Korea all the land that isn’t a mountain is either a building or farmland, so when the time came to build roads, they had to weave them amongst the farmers’ plots. The result is a confounding labyrinth of impossibly narrow raised roads winding through rice paddies. If another car is coming towards you, one of you better throw it in reverse and back up nice and slow or there’s gonna be problems. After this village excursion (which also included a market featuring delicious fruit and some absurdly frightening-looking farming implements) and a few further stops (Ah Young’s home, a sold-out baseball game we’d hoped to get into, dinner) we settled on a memorial/protest concert on the bank of a river in Daejeon.

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert on Korean politics or anything, and I’m not quite sure I’m even qualified to have an opinion, but the guy for whom this memorial was held seems like pretty much of a hero. He was President  Roh, Moo-Hyun. He worked his way up the social ladder, putting himself through law school, and eventually became president for the maximum tenure of five years. Despite repeated efforts from the Conservative Party to defame and even impeach him, he held strong until the time came to step down, at which point he moved back to his hometown (a very unusual move for a Korean politician, I guess; they normally stay in Seoul) and lived a farmer’s lifestyle. The most popular image of Roh today is him smiling beatifically and looking off into the distance, his head ringed by a farmer’s hat. President Roh killed himself almost exactly a year ago, after current President Lee repeatedly and publicly admonished and defamed him, as far as Ah Young explained it to me. Suddenly the Korean social value of “keeping face” seems a much more serious issue. So this concert was in memory of President Roh, and it’s moving throughout Korea, having started in Seoul. On Sunday it rolled through Daejeon, we went, and I may have been the only foreigner there.

When first entering the area, there was a lineup of pictures of Roh: memorabilia detailing his early life, rise to power, retirement, and eventual death. Even with just a small sketch of the full story in my mind, it was all very powerful stuff, especially knowing that I live in a country where the Conservative Party controls almost all media, and has banned speakers and artists from television who had spoken out in support of Roh. Ah Young told me that a couple of the artists who performed on Sunday had once been television regulars, but since publicly supporting Roh and criticizing Lee, they’re lucky to get an interview on cable.

Oof. This was some intense stuff.

Again, I’m not sure how entitled I am to even have an opinion of a government that I know so little about, but seeing as how I’m living in this country now, I feel that I should educate myself as much as I can about the Korean system of democracy. And the way it is now, with government-controlled media blocking out the voices of the opposition, it’s tough to say that it’s not more than a little scary. Of course, this is coming from the guy who wishes Obama would tell Fox News to put a sock in it or else, so take all this with a grain of salt.

Anyways, that’s all I have time for today. Next time on EMA, it’s a trip to Busan! Beaches! Beer! And my old arch-nemesis, frisbee! I have a history of getting hit in the face with the disc, so if I return to Daejeon with my nose intact I’ll consider the long weekend of the Buddha’s Birthday a smashing success. ‘Til next time!

노래방: Why, God, Why?

If the above Hangeul lettering just looks like little boxes to you, it’s probably because you live outside of Korea, have a crappy computer, or both. If you can see it but can’t read it, that’s probably fine unless you live outside of Korea. If you live in Korea, look me up and I’ll invite you to some free lessons so you can be freakin’ literate. It says “noraebang” (NO-ray-bong). What is a noraebang, you ask? Simple. A noraebang is a place of humiliation and suffering where your dignity goes to die, if you ever had any dignity in the first place. Last weekend I inadvertently, through no fault of my own, went to three of them in two nights. Now I hate myself. Allow me to elaborate.

You have probably heard of Korean Karaoke joints. They had one in the Twin Cities, although I never went because prior to coming to Korea I was violently opposed to karaoke. We got along like oil and the Gulf of Mexico (ooh, too soon?). But I was informed upon arriving in Korea that karaoke is an essential part of the “Korean night out experience”. If you haven’t figured it out yet, a noraebang is the place you go for karaoke in Korea. “Norae” means “song” and “bang” means room, so roughly the two put together means “singing room”. And that’s just what it is. This isn’t a karaoke “bar” like in America. You don’t sit there and watch terrible singers who can’t hold their liquor sing Journey, unless they happen to be your friends. You go with a group of people, generally smuggling in soju or beer or makggeoli or some unholy combination of all three, go into a private room, and you sing your heart out into a tinny little microphone with an uncomfortable amount of echo to it. Which is actually a ton of fun, if you do it every once in awhile. But not three times in two days. Here’s the synopsis:

Noraebang #1: Friday Night – I met up with some friends for burgers and beer at Santa Claus, a "Western-style” bar in Daejeon with the best damn burgers outside of Saint Paul’s own Blue Door Pub. After this, we went to a few other places, including an arcade where we played some rigged basketball games and tried to capture ridiculous little stuffed creatures with metal claws. Anyways, most everyone went home after awhile except for Brandy, another English teacher, who had never been to noraebang but insisted, “I kind of want to sing.” So there you have it. Only two people, but at 2AM it hardly matters anyways. As I said, the first one is pretty fun.

Noraebang #2: Saturday Night – After resolving to meet up with DMZ buddies Danielle and Daniella, later to be met by Ah Young as well as a gaggle of people who I didn’t really know up until that evening, I discovered that Danielle had stealthily been planning to go to noraebang for her first time ever that night. We went a little after 9 o’clock, which for my money is far too early to go to noraebang, ever. What’s worse than this, though, is that Ah Young had been pestering me to learn how to “K-Pop Dance” , which, for guys at least, seems to involve hip-thrusting and tearing one’s shirt off to reveal glistening washboard abs. Unfortunately, I don’t thrust my hips in public nor do I have a washboard stomach, nor do I dance well in general, so my K-Pop Dance moves are limited to something like the following video, which Ah Young also sent me after informing me that she was sure I’d be able to at least pull this dance off. She was wrong.

I can’t even do the K-Pop Dance as well as this guy.

So basically, if you go to noraebang with Korean friends, they might ask you to dance, which is fine for some, but nobody wants to see me do that.

So after two off-key trips in less than twenty-four hours, a few of us decided to go meet up with Melissa (who also came on the Seoul excursion, you’ll remember) at a place called Yellow Taxi, where we drank a few beers, watched a decent rock and roll cover band, and, you guessed it, wound up at noraebang somewhere around 1:30AM.

Noraebang #3: Also Saturday Night – You may wonder why I was subjecting myself to this much torture. At this point, my throat was hoarse from “singing” and I was quite tired. But there’s something about the weekend that makes me believe that it may never come again, so I must spend as much time with my friends as I can before I have to go back to the classroom on Monday. It gets me into trouble sometimes. At this noraebang, the lead singer of the band we had just watched showed up and would not relinquish the microphone. Not for anything. And it was at this point that I realized that he couldn’t sing. Not in a noraebang, at least. Not only was he off key, but it sounded like he was trying to sing some sort of harmony in a key from the seventh circle of hell. After ‘90’s pop ballads, slogging through “Bohemian Rhapsody” (which should just be outlawed from every karaoke playlist, ever, even if I’m often the one that picks it… no, especially because I’m often the one that picks it), and being forcibly “asked” to show off my nonexistent  K-Pop style Six-Pack Dance, I think the last straw may have been standing in a room listening to this guy wail like a kicked baby into a microphone. The worst of it was, I wondered how many more noraebang trips I had left in me before I became that guy.

So after all this incessant negativity, how can I redeem myself? Maybe with a nice, concise, perfectly rational Pro and Con list!

PRO NORAEBANG

1.) You get to act like a fool with your friends and there’s no strangers around to judge you.

2.) You sometimes can hear other people singing in other rooms, and they invariably sound worse than what’s happening in your room.

3.) They’re a great place to seek refuge late at night when you don’t want to go to a bar but don’t want to go home yet, either.

4.) Singing and dancing.

CON NORAEBANG(…this title doesn’t work as well as the “pro” one, does it?)

1.) You will probably have a sore throat from “singing” the next day, at least the first time.

2.) Someone will invariably pick “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Sometimes it’ll be me. If you’ve been drinking soju, you may wake up with headbanger’s neck.

3.) You might get stuck in a noraebang with the guy from the band I saw on Saturday.

4.) Singing and dancing.

Anyways, I can’t really rationalize this rant because I got almost no sleep last night. Which leads me to the last part of this post, entitled:

***

A LIST OF THINGS WHICH WOKE ME UP LAST NIGHT BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11:30 PM AND 6:00 AM

1.) A howling, unhappy Jindo dog. A Jindo is a rather cute Korean dog that’s bred only on one island in Korea. One of them lives across the street from me. I’m guessing he was trying to serenade me or something, but it just wasn’t working.

2.) My right shoulder. A few years ago I worked at a summer camp in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was the staff/student soccer game. I tried to steal the ball from some fifteen yeah old athletic beast, and instead tripped over my own feet and wound up tearing some ligaments in the shoulder, which yesterday started screaming in pain. I know, I know, you’re thinking, “Jake, why don’t you just go get some Tylenol or something?” Well, I tried, smartypants. I failed at finding it because it takes me twice as long to find simple things here in Korea because I am not good at life.

3.) Someone using a circular saw to cut sheet metal. This sound became familiar to me during my time in the theatre shop in college. It’s one of the worst noises imaginable, and someone was making it repeatedly for the better part of an hour, up until about 12:30, half a block away from me.

4.) What was either a fleet of very old trucks with no mufflers or a parade of jugglers juggling rusty chainsaws. I’m serious here. I was woken up by some sort of unholy roaring outside my window around 1AM and after shaking off the initial reaction that there were dinosaurs rampaging through Daejeon, I went back to sleep. Now I wish I hadn’t, because I keep thinking that it might have been a parade of rusty chainsaw jugglers, and if it was then I’m super-pissed that I missed that.

5.) The absurdly enthusiastic lovemaking of my neighbor upstairs. This was around 2:30AM. Here is a note to all lovers who live in apartment buildings with paper-thin walls: keep it down. Nobody wants to be woken up, much less woken up alone, by what sounds like two cowboys yelling at cattle (I am not exaggerating; just before I turned my music on loud enough to drown out the noise, which was pretty loud, I actually heard someone shout “WHOOP WHOOP!”).

6.) The significant other of my neighbor upstairs leaving, quite noisily, at around 3AM.

7.) The construction across the street from me. This happened at around 5:30, which is a perfectly appropriate time to begin dropping large steel poles to the ground from a height of about twenty feet. This went on at one minute intervals for quite some time. At this point you’re probably thinking “Why don’t you just get some earplugs, Jake?” In response, I’d like to direct you to my answer to your Tylenol query in #2. So maybe you can forgive me for being a wee bit cranky in this particular post.

***

If this post seems a little long, rambling, and cynical, I do apologize. That just seems to be my sense of humor these days. I promise that I will try to bring back my sunny disposition for the next post, which will hopefully involve some kind of adventure over the weekend of Buddha’s Birthday. But allow my to leave you with a photograph that I should have put on a previous post. These are my ravaged jeans from Microwave Day.

I tore the pocket open myself after the incident because I like tearing things. ‘Til next time, dear readers!

PS In the time it took me to proofread this post, my upstairs neighbors started going at it again. I’m not kidding. WHOOP WHOOP!