Hills and Apartments

Every so often, I'll set out from the Jeffpad and meander through the streets of my neighbourhood. It's at these times that I am most aware of the fact that I am in a very different place.

Busan's main streets are very large, wide thoroughfares. It's rare that one can cross the street directly; most often pedestrians either take bridges over the road or tunnels underneath it. It's not uncommon to have two levels of road on the main strip, with a raised highway running more or less on top of a street. Usually I'll walk along one of these for a little bit, but I prefer to move off the main drags and meander through the side streets, which are fascinating. They're small, narrow, and curvy, frequently without sidewalks, and are almost invariably sloping up or down.

I'm reminded a little bit of the Flintstones travel parts, wherein the scenery loops as they drive along, because there seems to be a specific number of types of business establishments in the residential areas of Busan. These are as follows:

-the corner store: purveyors of Fanta, snack food, and the like, these can be quite tiny (the size of a walk-in closet) to relatively spacious (the size of a large bachelor apartment)

-the optician: apparently, there is a very high demand for glasses and glasses-related paraphernalia in Busan

-the bakery: these often have French names and serve Eurasian fused baked goods. Fresh bread (but not, sadly, baguettes) vie for space with red bean donuts, cakes, and buns.

-the pizza place: In addition to the not infrequent Dominos and Pizza Huts, most neighbourhoods have a local pizzeria or three as well. These are generally given names similar to ones which might be found in North America: Pizza Time, Mr. Pizza, and Royal Pizza are all within a short walk of my apartment

-the Korean restaurant: barbecue-, soup-, or bibimbap-oriented, Busan has many, many, many eateries. As I may have mentioned in previous posts, the cost of food in restaurants is quite cheap (a solid meal can be had for $3), while the supermarkets are relatively expensive.

On a given street, then, the order is often something like this:

variety store, barbecue restaurant, optician, barber, variety store, bibimbap restaurant, pizza place, bakery, barbecue restaurant, optician.

All of this, of course, is set against a backdrop of apartment buildings, which are themselves framed by the green mountains of Busan. It sounds scenic, and it in its own peculiar way I suppose it is... the city has a sort of old- modern feeling to it. Think of The Fifth Element. It looks like the City of the Future, but twenty or thirty years later. I'll need to put up some photos to do this description justice. For now you'll have to trust me.

Rejoice! and be cool

The heat has broken at long last.

Tonight I do not sit under the air conditioner while beads of sweat fill my eyes.

Went to the beach last weekend, and spent the day frolicking in the Sea of Japan.
Good times abounded. Every time I go to the beach, I am amazed anew by the sheer volume of people consorting on the sands and in the water. According to Wikipedia, as many as 100,000 people gather on the one-mile (1.6km) strip of beach on busy days, and I believe it. The umbrellas stretch off to infinity in either direction, and it is no small accomplishment to find valuable waterspace.

A follow-up to an earlier posting: the official site for the movie D-War (Korean title) may be visited here. Again, I heartily recommend it.

We've just started a book box at school, where in people can drop off books they've read, and pick up ones they haven't. I'm cautiously optimistic, but also desperate. I feel like (insert clever and humorous drug dependency-related reference here). I miss books. I quickly got through all those I brought with me, and while one of the bookstores here does have a reasonably comprehensive English-language section, I'd rather not spend money on books that I'll be leaving behind.

The book box also got me thinking about books on which I'm missing out back home. I've got the new Jasper Fforde on my list of to-reads, as well as Paul Shirley's memoir,and Joan Druett's Island of the Lost, among others, but I'm sure there are still many more that have slipped under my radar or will have done so by the time I once again in a land with English-language libraries. In order to keep track, and to hopefully assist anyone else looking for stuff to read, I've decided to keep a list on the side of books I want to read. Feel free to post suggestions on the blog or email them to me here. In the unlikely event that the Book Box proves successful beyond all imagining, I may well open up a second sidebar entitled "what I'm reading now" or somesuch, but this seems improbable at best, so don't hold your breath.

You'll note that the links on the sidebar all bring you to either a big Canadian or American e-retailer. This is simply for ease of information gathering. If you want to read any of these titles, I strongly suggest you go to your local neighbourhood bookstore and pick them up there. Or your library. Libraries rock. I strongly recommend the Toronto Public Library if you live in Toronto. I also strongly recommend Toronto itself.

August

is upon us, with everything that entails. Or doesn't entail, one could argue. Because my school year here doesn't follow the Canadian calendar, I'm working most of the month. I've been off this past week, though, and doing the tourist thing to a small degree.

In no particular order, a few random thoughts:

-Beaches are better when you have a frisbee.

-Korean movie theatres have assigned seating. This is useful if you get there early (you can pick your own seats and then show up again 5 minutes before the movie starts), but less useful if you show up late (you're stuck with whatever's left). Then again, people who show up late to movies are generally stuck with the leftovers anyway.

-The odds of being visited by Jehovah's Witnesses are considerably higher in Busan than in Toronto.

-If you choose to order at random from a menu by picking something you can read without having any idea what it is, it's probably soup.

-No matter how hot and sweaty you think you'll be when you go outside, you'll be hotter and sweatier.

-The electronics stores here sell crazy-tiny cellphones, super-advanced computers, nifty little gadgets of all shapes and sizes... and portable cassette players.

-Children like to practice their English when they see white people. Some days this is cute. Some days this is not. The variable cuteness has less to do with the children than the temperature.

-Speaking of cellphones, I'm (hopefully) getting one this weekend. I've never had a cellphone before, but I think this proves I am finally a Person of Consequence.

-Korean public baths are quite relaxing. Cheap, too! For about C$4 one can relax in a selection of hot,warm, cool and cold baths for as long as one likes. An excellent way to spend an hour after walking around a mountain.

2 Quick Notes

I've taken down the slideshow that was up for a little while on the right-hand side. Those of you who wish to view it may do so at our sister site.

There are only a few hours left to vote on the North Korea question, if you haven't already done so. Thanks to those who did vote, and especially those who explained the reasons behind their selection. I haven't completely made up my mind, but I'm leaning strongly in one direction.

mud-luscious and puddle wonderful, and a temple too

Thanks to e.e. cummings for part A of the title. Sadly, though, Mud Festival didn't quite live up to its billing. I had been led to expect a sea of mud stretching as far as the eye could see, with myriad opportunities to frolic and bathe. Instead, we found a nice enough beachtown, two little sections of which had been converted into mud-slides and mudwading pools, around of each of which was a line of people. Boryeong, the town in question, has a rather nice sand beach, but the region is well-known for the ostensible curative properties of the local mud, hence the impetus for the festival, and also my mild surprise at the relative lack of mud. The distribution of free bars of mud soap was a nice touch, though.

Upon rereading the above, I realize that you should be forgiven for inferring there was almost no mud at all, but that wasn't exactly the case. The mud was there, but only in such quantities that an effort had to be made in order to be muddy- the advertising for the festival gives the impression that great effort is needed in order to stay clean, and this is most definitely not true. Still, a valuable lesson was learned about forming expectations based on advertising, so not all is lost.

Beyond the mud was an excuse for thousands of people, waeguk-in and Koreans alike, to pass a weekend on a beach. As such, it was successful, though I was somewhat discomfited to find myself in what could, in many regards, have passed for a frosh week celebration at Wasaga or the like. I was also saddened that it took me most of the weekend to find a store selling frisbees- these generators of awesomeness do not have nearly the same ubiquity in Korea as they do back home. I'm further amused by the fact that I've just paired a comment on the surfeit of North Americans with one on the scarcity of North American beach toys, but so be it.


Today being Constitution Day, our pedagogical efforts were unneeded, so a colleague and I decided to explore Beomeosa, acclaimed by Wikipedia as "one of the country's leading urban temples."

After a short subway ride and an even shorter cab ride, we found ourselves high up a mountain and in a completely different world. One of the characteristics of Busan of which I'm less fond is the lack of green space, but the temple is essentially in the middle of the forest, and absolutely stunning to boot. It was originally constructed in the 7th Century, but has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times since then.

The term temple is a bit of a misnomer, at least insofar as I have generally understood the term. Like the other Buddhist temples I've seen, Beomeosa isn't one single building, but is instead a collection of shrines, pagodas, statuary, and the like. For this reason, it makes an excellent place to wander around in slack-jawed awe, always a good state to be in, especially in a place of religion. It also makes one (meaning me) more conscious of the connection between people and the rest of nature. As impressive as, say, Notre-Dame de Paris is, when one enters into it one is definitely stepping into a human creation and leaving the rest behind. Beomeosa, while still obviously and inarguably a construct of humanity, is a part of its natural surroundings in a completely different way. The trees, the water, and the bamboo all form (to these Western eyes, at least) a part of the experience. That's a good thing.

Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 2.3

(N.B. This post has been edited after publishing: the three questions have been separated into separate posts for completely unnecessary reasons.)

In question 3, Adam notes that "according to rumour, South Koreans eat dog. According to [this] blog, puppies are available for sale on the sidewalks of Pusan," and he wonders if there is a connection.

The Waeguk Responds

Being of a not incurious mind myself, I endeavoured to do further research on the matter at hand, and consulted with one of my non-waeguk coworkers.

It is true, I learned, that dog is still eaten in Korea, but largely by the older generation. This seems to be predominantly a matter of changing tastes, but economist and sociologists would be better positioned than I to speculate at great length on the subject.

The puppies, then, are being sold not for food but as pets. This makes sense, really, because while it is relatively easy to sell live lobster or fish as food, a puppy, I would think, is quite another question. I would venture to guess that most dog meat sold comes from mature animals, as it wouldn't be worth the time or money for city dwellers to buy a pup and then spend the time and money waiting for it to grow to a size worth eating.

Interested in recipes for dog? Please click here. I haven't tried any of them myself as yet, and can't vouch for their quality, but I expect a full report from anyone who does try them out. I've heard standard poodle is particularly delicious.

New Feature

In the 1800s, travel was restricted to the upper middle classes or to those who traveled out of necessity, be it for work or war. In Victorian England, it was customary for young adults with money to do a "tour of the Continent" as a rite of passage. The number of Western visitors to Asia, however, was considerably lower. Of those brave souls who did travel to the Orient over a century ago, only a tiny number had blogs, laptops and internet access being far more prohibitively expensive than they are today. For example, an 1894 IBM Thinkpad with teak inlay, ivory keys and a polished silver tracking ball cost the equivalent of a house.

Today, though, it would seem that just about any educated adult with a hankering to see the world can and does set off to do so, and as often as not will set up a website to detail their adventures. It is true, my friends: I am not the inventor of the travel blog.

On the other hand, it is my hope that I am the first to offer your very own personalized Canadian Answerer of Questions Relating to Korea service (CAQRs).

Ask A Waeguk will allow you do direct all of your Korea- and Jeff-related questions to me, where they will be posted and answered in a prompt, entertaining, and sometimes accurate fashion. Want to know what it's like to have random children come up and talk to you because of the colour of your skin? Ask a Waeguk! Want to know what Canadians do in Korea on a Saturday night? Ask a Waeguk! Want to know where to get good bibimbap in Pusan? Ask a Waeguk! For that last one, actually, you might be better off asking somebody who's lived in this city for more than 9 days, but the idea is clear.

Ask A Waeguk : You've got questions. I may even have answers.

Waeguk (n): Clever, handsome foreigner full of witty, perceptive and insightful observations pertaining to life in South Korea.

The Streets of Pusandelphia

I have a theory, which is still being refined, but the essence of it is as follows: anything one needs in Pusan can be bought from a street vendor. As I've been here for less than a week, I can't yet state it conclusively, but a short list of items available for purchase on the street would include:

-books
-vegetables
-sandals
-kitchen utensils
-puppies
-umbrellas
-fish, live
-fish, dead
-clothes
-songbirds
-CDs
-octopi, dead
-octopi, live

Rest assured I will remain vigilant and keep you, my faithful readers, apprised of any major additions to the above. Any city in which one can purchase both octopi and puppies without having to set foot in a store is a city worthy of the name.

안 녕 히 치 서ㅣ요!

The First 48

First impressions of Pusan? Big, noisy, a little smelly, but more or less what I expected. If anything, that's what has surprised me most of all so far- the lack of any major surprises.

When it comes to minor surprises, however, there have been several. When using a shower in a Korean love motel, always check to see where the drain is. If you find that it's outside of the shower stall, you're better off not using a shower mat, as it will become submerged in no short time.

If you want to be able to watch episodes of last year's American Idol, turn to Korean TV. The same applies for Home Alone (in June, at that!), Star Wars, Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, and various other seemingly random selections of American cinematography. All in English, with Korean subtitles.

Stay tuned for further updates...right now, my stomach is growling to the point I suspect an aide is running straight to Kim Jong-Il to warn him of strange sensor readings.


안 녕 히 치 서ㅣ요!