A Weekend in Seoul

The reason I haven't posted lately is because I've come down with a cold and I've been keeping pretty busy with laying around. After days of taking it easy, I'm feeling much better now, and I'm happy to be blogging again. The weekend before last I went to Seoul, South Korea, to visit my girlfriend Elizabeth. The plane ride from Fukuoka City (a 45-minute train ride from Iizuka) to Incheon international airport in South Korea took about an hour and a half. I could have taken the ferry across the ocean to Pusan, a port city in South Korea, but because I was going to Seoul (much further inland) the cost of flying ended up being about the same, and overall a lot more convenient. Getting through customs and immigration was pretty easy, going there as well as coming back to Japan.

I had two distinct moments that weekend that gave me a sense of my living in interesting times. The first happened when I was at Fukuoka airport, checking out the crowd about to board a plane for Korea. I saw mostly Japanese and Korean people - older, younger, and of both genders - but I also saw one African lady. She might have been African-American, or African, or of many backgrounds, but it really struck me at that moment how internationalized the world we live in actually is. I was thinking that a few decades ago seeing her there would be something that was unbelievably rare, but now it's a part of everyday life. In any case, I still really wanted to know her story.

The other moment that gave me a funny feeling of our times happened when Elizabeth and I were visiting a temple in the middle of the city (which, by the way, has about 11 million people living in a centralized area - as well about 8 million in the suburbs). As I looked over the Asian style roofing that made up the perimeter of the temple, not only did I see tall buildings but I also saw a big, colorful video screen. We stood in the middle of a temple that was hundreds of years old (though it had been rebuilt and so was new in that sense) - and were looking at a brand new, bright video screen showing an advertisement. This was the second time I thought "Wow...what a funny world to be living in right now."

I can't think of much else to say other than to explain the few good pictures I took and give a big thanks to Elizabeth for being my awesome guide and helping me to a very enriching weekend...

The temple we visited in Seoul.

An area of Seoul called Insadong, which has many small shops, street food stalls, craft booths, and restaurants lining this main pathway and the narrow alleyways on it's sides. I was surprised to see so many people there, but Elizabeth told me that it was comparatively not crowded at that time.

Me at a restaurant in Insadong famous for its dumplings, or mandu. Here I'm about to pick one up with Korean chopsticks, which, unlike in Japan, are made of metal. After getting used to the lighter, wooden chopsticks in Japan, these heavier ones were a little difficult to use. But, on the plus side, I got a nice little hand workout during the meal.

A photo of the subway in Seoul - cheap, convenient, and extensive. Elizabeth and I covered quite a bit of ground in just a few days on this thing. Compared to the subway in Tokyo, the price was significantly cheaper, though the Tokyo subway is also quite extensive. One difference that really struck me as being non-Japanese was seeing people hawking goods on the subway. This is something I don't think would ever fly in Japan, where keeping to yourself (especially among the older generation) is the preferred norm, and having to sit there on a commute to and from work while someone with a raised voice tried to sell you a pipe cleaner would be considered downright rude.

A busy street in Seoul at night...