Now for the fun stuff

As a result of being really, really, really bored at work with nothing to do, I give you the weekend exploits that took place during my winter camp.

Now, after reading the previous post about all the nonsense during camps, it would not be strange to question just exactly how my brain didn’t explode from all the bullshit that went down the last few weeks. There are several reasons for this. First, Korea has helped me build up a massive tolerance to this kind of stuff. If there is anything at all that I can take away from Korea when I leave, it is this: People are quite often very, very dumb, and they say and do very, very dumb things, so just roll with it. I feel like that advice will serve me well in the rest of my life. Secondly, the weekend events have been interesting enough to distract me from the week and help heal all the mental damage the week had caused. This post documents the latter reason.

Since it’s been so long since I wrote about my life in Korea, I actually have to start way back out our group’s Christmas dinner. Amy found some French restaurant near the Hongdae party area, so we figured we would celebrate Christmas with some wine and fancy food. Jenna, Carrie, Amy and I were not disappointed. Well, maybe Jenna and Carrie were a bit, as the majority of the scrumptious dishes contained meat. While those two had to settle for appetizers and soups and what not (which were still tasty), Amy and I split their special, the 5 course meal. First course….massive oysters. Yes, yes and more yes. It had been a while since I had eaten anything like that. I also recommend, when eating oysters, to have friends present who don’t like seafood and are grossed out by the fact that you appear to be eating snot. Makes it even better. The next course was soup (or was the soup the first course?) and was also very good. The third course was the main dish, the stuffed chicken breast. It wasn’t super awesome, but it was good enough for me. Amy hated hers and gave most of it to me. Advice: always, always go out to dinner with your female friends. They will never finish all their food and that’s where you come in. One meal for 20 bucks? Pretty expensive. Two meals for 20 bucks? Exactly. Genius. They followed that up with tasty, tasty cake. Wait, that’s only 4 dishes. Perhaps the glass of wine was one? I guess I’m okay with that. The entertainment, as it always does when we are drinking, came from Ms. Carrie. She has the tolerance of a tiny new born infant, so one glass of wine and she hits the perfect level of ridiculousness. Not to say that the rest of us weren’t out there. I believe I won with the quote of the night, when I said: “Sometimes I wish I were a large black woman…you know for their incredible singing voices.” I do not, however, take that back. I wish I could sing like those ladies, instead of sounding like a young boy whose voice is cracking thanks to puberty (jurys out on whether I’ve actually gone through it yet). After dinner we headed out to the music bar where I had my horrifying encounter with the aggressive girl from Chicago, but thankfully she didn’t show up this time. We sat around for a while and enjoyed some beer with some actual good music in the background. When we left, silly Carrie saw some beautiful fixed gear bikes resting against a bar. Granted, I don’t see anything that crazy about bikes, but she loves the things. So much so that she actually went up and hugged the bikes. Naturally, the owners of the bikes thought this was weird and funny (there were just inside the window of the bar), so they came out and took pictures with Carrie. She didn’t really care for the pics, she just wanted some shots of the bikes. Ohhhhh alcohol.

The next weekend we got together was the first weekend back after Japan. It was Amy’s birthday, so she decided to go visit Anna and Carrie in Ilsan, rather than boring old Seoul again. We met the gang at an Indian restaurant in Ilsan’s really fancy mall for the standard wonderful Indian food (soooooooooooooooo much better than Korean food). After the meal we moved to some generic bar where the wait staff was super excited to see us, probably cuz there really wasn't anyone there. Being the crazy party animals we are, we lasted until 11:30pm before we were all really tired and bored with drinking, so we all crashed at Anna's apartment watching "Tropic Thunder". Love that movie. Somehow having entire scenes where I had no idea what any character was saying made me love the movie even more. Good, good stuff. On Sunday, we ate birthday cake and pizza while watching "True Blood" and old episodes of "Hercules". You know, the one with Kevin Sorbo. And did I mention it has Bruce Campbell as the King of Thieves. Ohhhhhhh yeah. Dude pulls out sick standing front and back flips like nothing. But then Hercules punches him through a tree or wall and it's usually over. Memo to Korea: Get a show, any show, that is remotely as cool as "Hercules" and I will watch it and stop talking about how your television blows (it most certainly does). That is all.

The following weekend, due to all our other friends having fallen down wells or having been sucked into alternate dimensions or having been kidnapped by North Korean guerillas, there was nobody else around, so Jenna was forced to hang out with just me. I can only imagine how intense her boredom must have been to willingly choose to spend time with me rather than watch paint dry. Since she had no school that week and was bored (see above), see wandered into town on Wednesday. We grabbed some Indian food (notice a trend?) and then some alcohol. What? Liquor on a weekday? My good, I'm turning into a Korean! Wait, I'm from Wisconsin. Never mind. Business as usual. As our friends were still dead to the world on Friday and Saturday, it was just the two of us again. On Friday, we met near City Hall and stumbled upon the greatest restaurant ever....The Manchester United Pub/Restaurant. That's right. The greatest football club in the entire world is such a massive brand that they now have their own restaurants. It was interesting, to say the least. The entryway was all terribly overpriced merchandise, will the walls were littered with photos of the team, tv screens showing game highlights over and over (I never get tired of watching John Terry choke in PKs in the Champions League Final ever), and player biographies. They had a really large variety of food. We settled on some yogurty drinks. I don't remember what they are called, but Jenna assured me they were Indian in origin, so naturally they must be good. Also, they had Wayne Rooney's name attached to them, so double win. We hung around for a bit, feeling awkward and a little weird about the very existence of such a restaurant. Ohhh, and the fact that we were the only ones in the restaurant didn't help either. Don't know how long the place will stick around if nobody's showing up so I gotta get Jamie (lifelong Liverpool fan) in there as soon as possible. It would be too much fun not to.

http://www.manutd-cafe.com/gallery5.php

There's the link to pics from the Korean restaurant. After our snack we left and headed to Myeong Dong to catch a viewing of "Sherlock Holmes". While it wasn't your typical Sherlock Holmes movie, I enjoyed it, as Robert Downey Jr. never fails to impress. Plus the beautiful bro-mance between Jude Law's Watson and Downey Jr's Holmes made me a little teary for the long lost days in the Mound house and the dorms before that. Rounds....sigh.

On Saturday evening, we headed out to the jazz club. We stopped off for some Vietnamese pho (spelling?) and soup first, where I classed up the joint by failing to deliver the spoon full of soup to my mouth on several occasions, making a sizable mess on myself and the table. Classy, as always. Once at the jazz club, we settled down for some wine and jazz. More like a bunch of wine. Over 2 bottles of wine between the two of us, we enjoyed some pretty solid jazz. The highlight was the odd coupling of a 50 something year old black guy on the piano accompanied by 3 20 something Koreans on the bass, drums and saxophone. The guy on piano was super charismatic and funny and hyper, flailing all over the place on the ivory like Stevie Wonder or something, while his Korean bandmates just stood or sat there, playing their instruments and that's it. They didn't even look like they enjoyed being there. I don't know if I'll find a better microcosm for my experiences in Korea. There's the foreigner, goofy, laid-back, relaxed and trying to have fun, and then there's the Koreans, stiff, almost robot-like, with ass cheeks clenched so tight they could make diamonds. At least the crew at the blues club seemed to enjoy playing. From there it was back to the Crazy Wine Bar. Unfortunately, no B-level celebrities this time. Just lots of darts. Embarrassingly, I did not win ever match. Hopefully nobody was watching.

The next weekend after that (aka last weekend), we headed to a house party in honor of the birthday of one of the girls at capoeira. On our way there, we decided it would be in good taste to bring our own booze. So we stopped at a nearby convenience store. They had 6 packs of Coronas, so naturally grabbed them. Especially when the price tag said 3,500 won (3 bucks). For six? Hellz yes. Cept that was 3,500 won...per bottle. 18 bucks later, we were on our way. Sure it hurt, but it definitely beats drinking the local piss water or paying 5 to 6 bucks for a Corona at a bar. Yeah, good beer doesn't come cheap here. Once at the house party, we attempted to mingle. I say attempted, as I really only talked to the few people I already knew from capoeira. But I was talking to people at all, so I consider it an improvement. Some time after, the group moved to nearby Itaewon for some dancing and more drinking. My advice to the audience: don't drink wine (before the party), then beer, then hard liquor. They don't mix well and makes Sunday a rather unpleasant day. At the club/bar, I was of course forced to dance. Thankfully, no one was hurt or died...this time. The venue changed as we found another more suitable dance floor for our large group. Here those in the group with some skill were able to show off their considerable moves while I watched from a safe distance. Some of the Koreans from capoeira even came too and showed off their moves. One of the fellows was too injured to participate in capoeira just hours ago, but he certainly wasn't too injured to keep from pulling off a 6 or 7 rotation head spin. Interesting. Noraebang room followed, which we quickly bounced from, as Miss Jenna really wanted some french fries. At 3:30 in the morning. Thankfully, bars understand the randomness of drunken hunger pangs, so we were able to get our greasy potato fix. Finally off to bed at 4:30. Ahhhhhh, sleep. Well, not before trying to watch a movie (not my suggestion) that lasted 10 minutes before people fell asleep (yeah, kinda figured that would happen). Sunday? Well, it was a Lazy Sunday, that's for sure.

Winter Camp: This only happens once a year?......darn.

It’s been a long, long time since I posted about anything pertaining to my life here in Korea and I figured now was as good a time as any, considering I’m stuck at school all week with nothing to do. Yep, no camps (thank god) or classes to teach, I just gotta warm the hell out of my seat. Now normally I’m really, really good at that, but this week my skill has been put to the test, as my office is rather chilly. How chilly? How does 3 degrees Celcius (38 Farenheit or so) grab ya? That was yesterday. Today we are up to 5 degrees (42 Farenheit), so I’m typing this in shorts and sandals cuz it’s so damn toasty. Sure my office has a big box heater thing, but it suddenly doesn’t work. They gave me a little electric heat fan (for those who don’t know, it looks like a small fan, cept on the inside it has little coils that heat up instead of fan blades), but those things suck. They only heat the air directly around then, rather than the entire room like the big box heater. And they don’t heat so much as burn and singe the areas closest to them. Currently my right leg feels like its hairs are being slowly burned off, while my left leg is, well, not warm. The situation is, in a word, shitty. I could go on and on about the lousy heating policies here in Korea (floor heating is crap by the way), but I won’t, for as lousy as my school situation is this week, they are letting me go home at noon, so all is forgiven.

Since it has been so long since I posted, I figured I should give a quick update of whats been going on. When last you saw (err, read) me, I was at the stupid workshops. Well those things took place on a Monday and Tuesday, with Tuesday being my last day of school till winter break. I used some of my vacation to free up Wednesday and Thursday to do, well nothing. Then Christmas was on that Friday, I left for Japan from Sunday through Saturday (Dec 27th to Jan 2nd) and started winter camps the next Monday (Jan 4th). Those lovely, lovely camps took three weeks (Jan 4th to Jan 22nd), and now I’m doing a whole lotta nothing this week. Which brings us back to the present.

Naturally, the majority of my time the last few weeks has been swallowed up by winter camps, so I’ll start there. Ohhhh, the memories. I believe I mentioned it in previous posts, but originally I got yanked around a bit about camp. First, I was gonna teach 2 weeks at a different school, then it was 3 weeks at my school, then they added in 1st and 2nd graders, who I’ve never worked with, and asked me to design camps for them.

Well, with all that behind me and a good week in Japan to relax, I was ready to do this teaching thing (don’t worry the very un-Wallin-like enthusiasm for work was dead and buried by the second day of camp). It just so happened that Korea decided to have its heaviest snowfall in 33 years on the same day, so getting to school was difficult, to put it mildly. I should have just walked, probably would have been quicker. Seoul got hit with quite a few inches of stuff, nothing too crazy for Wisconsin, but crazy, crazy, amounts for Korea. They never get this much. As a result, they were woefully unprepared. How unprepared? The roads weren’t back to normal, in my opinion, until Friday. 5 days later. And I’m not talking the back alleys and shit, I’m talking the major highway/expressway across southern Seoul that runs right next to my apartment. Most places it seemed like they did nothing, just having the cars drive over the snow until it was packed down and impossible to plow. As for snow shovels? I have yet to see one. Most people were clearing sidewalks and walkways with brooms. Freaking brooms. Yeah, that’s gonna move 4 inches of snow real good like. Jesus.

Having no idea the storm of the century was heading my way, I didn’t get up any earlier than usual, so I arrived to school late. Surprisingly, it was only 10 minutes late. Did I think I was gonna die along the way? Yeah, I did. Considering I look both ways, repeatedly, when crossing a street, a one way street, here in Korea (yeah, they are that bad and unpredictable), I was sure I was dead when I went across the crosswalks. But surprisingly, the Korean drivers, pretty damn lousy on a good day, weren’t really that bad in the snow. Good work folks.

Anyways, I walk into my first class of camp (the 1st and 2nd graders) and my co-teacher is there to help me. Cool. Didn’t think she would be there, but I could always use the help. Now, I had previously balked at making a completely new camp for the young kids cuz I just didn’t wanna make that much extra work for myself, so I recycled the easy stuff from the older kids. This was thrown out the window after I spent the first 10 minutes of class working the kids through “What’s your name?” and the answer “My name is ….”. Crap. New lesson plan on the fly. Had to make up some stuff, but we did okay. The other classes went pretty well too. The drama started once class was over, of course (maybe in some utopian/dream society, people can actually do their jobs free from the bullshit and drama, but that dream society is not Korea).

After class, I was immediately dragged into a meeting with the vice-principal to discuss some things. Firstly, my tardiness. Yes, class does start at 9:00am and my contract time says I need to be at school at 8:50am and I showed up at 9:10am. I get that. However, its….well, it’s a blizzard outside. A little bit of leniency should be allowed. Buses aren’t running at all and traffic isn’t moving. Kinda hard to travel by bus in that environment. Where it got really ridiculous was when she explained to me that I need to be at school before the 8:50am time required in my contract. Why? Well, “some of the parents are very busy and must bring their children to school early, but they can’t get into the classroom, so you need to be here then.” Excuse me, how is that any of my responsibility? 10 minutes before class starts, which is when I normally would arrive, is completely reasonable to ask of me, but anytime before that is completely unnecessary. I was told that at the latest, I should be at school at 8:50am. Naturally, as with any disagreement in the workplace with superiors here in Korea, I say absolutely nothing, nod in agreement, then just completely ignore whatever nonsense they just gave me. I’m gonna show up at 8:50am, whether the parents like it or not. It’s there problem to modify their schedules to accommodate. Plus, most of these kids live a stone’s throw away in massive apartment buildings, literally 2 minutes walk away. If these kids are incapable of walking this distance without holding their parents hand, that is also not my problem (the excessive babying of the children here is a whole other subject). To make this argument even more ridiculous, when I was able to get to school at 8:50am from Thursday onward (I badly underestimated Seoul’s ability to remove the snow, thus resulting in being late again on Tuesday and Wed…you can imagine that went over well), only one student was waiting at 8:50am. One student. Out of 13. And most of those 13 arrived 5 to 10 minutes late to class. Now, I understand that people may have modified their schedule by then, but it still doesn’t give their complaint much ground to stand on. Definitely doesn’t back up the amount of uproar and annoyed parents that the vice principal claimed there was. Perhaps she was just covering up her own complaints about me by transposing them on the kids…..

Her other problem this day (…yeah, there were several days of meetings and lectures) was about the material for the little kids. Obviously, it was too hard. I knew that, after working with them, that’s why I changed it. That had always been the plan, make some rough plan, then adjust for the kids. So naturally, I didn’t take to kindly to having to listen to her explain that the class was too hard and that I should teach this and teach this and teach that for a whole hour. Firstly, this woman knows nothing about actually teaching, much less teaching English, and secondly, I can’t get much actual planning and prepping done while sitting on a couch in her office listening to her lame suggestions. So ended Day 1. Stressed and frustrated with this woman, I went home.

Day 2 went well, at least from the teaching standpoint. The newly designed 1st and 2nd grader lesson plan went well (I made sure to include coloring and drawing), and the older kids weren't so bad. There was, however, another meeting with the vice-principal, not like I was surprised. Again, she stressed the need to arrive early (I rolled in at 9 today, as I wrongly assumed the buses would be running properly again) for the sake of the parents and kids, which I previously said turned out to be a load of crap. Today's lecture point du jour was that the material was too hard for the students. Apparently, after one day (yes, one day) some of the students complained that it was too hard, those students' parents complained to the vice-principal and here we are. Seriously, one day? I didn't know who was in my classes, other than their names, so my lessons were obviously not going to be perfectly suited to the students without actually meeting them in person. Also, some days will obviously be harder than others, as I'm no professional, so my lessons aren't perfectly designed for their levels. The students aren't all at the same levels, as the classes were separated by grade, so the material was hard to a few students with little to no English ability but was perfectly doable for the vast majority of the class. That sounds like a success to me. However, it was made very clear to me that I should be focusing the lesson on those low level kids, while boring the shit out of the high level kids. As you might expect, I zoned out and completely ignored this BS. In my experience with these kids, the low level children are usually the ones who won't do the work and don't give a shit, while the kids that do their work are of average or high ability. Whatever I give these low level folks, regardless of difficulty, they won't do it. No child left behind? Not so much. These low level kids need special, extra one-on-one attention to catch up that I simply can't offer, at the expense of everyone else. Sorry.

Day 3 was much the same. Classes went fine, followed by lecture from the vice-principal. If this shit was gonna continue every day, I wasn't gonna make it to the end of 3 weeks. With the 1st and 2nd grade class issues resolved, today's diatribe consisted entirely on the material being too hard for the older kids. The vice-principal pulled out another gem here. She claimed that one student had been so scared/upset with how hard the first day had been, that they just quit the camp and never came back. Pretty ridiculous to judge it on one day, but okay, some of these Korean kids are pretty damn coddled, so I'll buy it...at first. My curiosity got the better of me and I had to check the attendance sheets to see who it was that quit after the first day. The conclusion? Nobody. Sure I had some students who missed a day here or there, but then they'd be back the next day. What the hell was the vice-principal talking about here? My suspicion is that she had problems with my class material (why I have no idea, as she can't speak English at all, so what the hell does she know?) and in order to "save face" and speak in a round about way, she said the parents and kids complained, rather then saying she had a problem with the class. This is where our cultures differ. Where I'm from, that's called "BS" and "lying" and "deceitful", which are generally bad things. Here that same behavior, in this instance, is a culturally accepted mode of conflict resolution.

So I modified some stuff to ensure the kids had nothing to whine about. We had originally been watching the movie "UP" in small segments and answering simple questions, like "what is his name?, etc", but since that was too hard, I decided to simply teach some phrases from the movie, which the kids wouldn't really have to do anything for or think at all, outside of maybe listening to me (which most didn't), so it couldn't possibly be too hard. Heaven forbid they have to use the language and learn something. Wouldn't want that.

Day 3 also featured the longest argument, as I ended up leaving school a full hour after I'm supposed to due to more garbage. This time the vice-principal was bothered by the fact that I was teaching the same material to each of the three older student classes (I have 1 class of 1st/2nd, 2 of 3rd/4th, and 1 5th/6th). I believe some "student" (yeah, doubt that) complained that the B-2 class (which contains the higher level 3rd and 4th graders) was learning the same thing as the B-1 kids (who are the lower level 3rd and 4th graders). I guess they were offended that the smart kids were learning the same stuff as the dumb kids and because they are smart they deserve better things than the dummies. Frankly, I thought the camps were supposed to fun and entertaining, so I went out and tried to find 3 weeks worth of fun stuff. I tried to explain to the vice-principal that I wasn't making 9 (well 10, if you count the little kids) fucking weeks of different material, but obviously I was talking to a brick wall. God, I hate brick walls. She even called up the co-teacher and we spent 40 minutes talking, me rubbing my forehead due to the massive headache I know had and saying things like, "I don't understand what the hell you want me to do...please tell me what this woman wants" while she said things like, "Can't you just change it a little?" Not the co-teacher's fault here, just the impossible to reason with vice-principal.

The woman's last suggestion/complaint dealt with teaching "Key Words" and "Key Phrases", which are important words or useful sentences in each chapter in our school textbooks. In her mind, all English classes should be taught through extended repetition of a few important words or sentences. Wait, I thought camps were supposed to be fun? Cuz this stuff would be the exact opposite of that. Naturally, I was confused. I tried to explain that I wouldn't be teaching anything, simply allowing the kids to use the material they already have. My message didn't make it through the brick wall, obviously. She also wanted different key phrases for each of the older kids. At this point I just gave up, made up some shit, typed it up, turned it in and went home. alsdfjsaldkfjslkdfhslakdhflsjf. Yeah.

Now, for some of my favorite quotes from the vice-principal over the camps (or at least as close to accurate as I could remember).

As to why the students couldn't bring their own materials (scissors, colored pencils, paper, etc) and why we needed to supply the stuff: "It's cold out so the students can't bring their colored pencils and materials." Ummmm........what? How does the temperature have anything to do with the kids bringing a backpack with their things. I don't even understand a little. Not one bit.

Advice on how to better control my classes, as they were running amok and not listening to me: "You must speak louder. If you talk loud, the students will speak louder and pay attention." ahahahahahah. What a joke. Let me get this straight...if I speak louder (aka yell) at my students, they will raise the volume of their responses, rather than whisper and they will inherently listen to me. Not sure I agree, as I tried this tactic last year when I would lose my patience with the kids and they would stop talking for a second, be shocked at Eric Teacher being loud, then resume talking. So if I can teach my entire lesson in that one second they shut up, then I'm golden.

As for improving my general teaching methodology: "You must be funnier and more exciting and more expressive". Right, how could I forget? I'm not an English teacher, I'm an English speaking clown that gives out candy and makes balloon animals. How silly of me to forget.

"I want to stab myself in the face." Actually, that one isn't a quote from the vice-principal. That one's from me and I wrote it on the paper when I was trying to remember the quotes for future reference. I think it accurately expresses my frustration at the time.

As for the kids? Well, in comparison they weren't so bad. They were pretty good for the 1st week, but they went downhill from there. I originally assumed that, this being a optional English camp that students had to go out of their way to sign up for, the students would all want to be there and would be well behaved. Hahahahah. Man, am I dumb. Most of the kids were really good and did their work and wanted to be there and I catered to them obviously. Then there were the few students who were forced into the class by parents, clearly didn't wanna be there, and refused to do anything. I went out of my way to involve them, going so far as to doing their work for them at some points, to no avail. So eventually I stopped bothering if they weren't gonna give a shit. I would ask them to join a group for the activity or give them the worksheet or paper everyone else was working on, they would flat out refuse, so I would move on and help the other students, while they went back to staring at the wall or playing Game Boy or reading a book. Fine by me. Hope you guys can learn English really well through osmosis.

Those kids weren't so bad, as they quietly did nothing, but didn't disrupt class. The disrupters....ugggg. A small group of boys in one class really never wanted to do any of my activities, but they did want to play with the lawn darts and plastic bowling ball set at the back of class, so whenever I turned my back, they were setting up and letting loose. And they weren't even any good at bowling.

All those students pale in comparison to one kid. This kid sticks in my mind because he was an absolute asshole that caused difficulty everyday. Originally he just didn't do his work and sat at the back of the class doing nothing. That evolved into talking to other students and distracting them from working. One day in particular, he got into a little argument with another boy and then put him in a headlock, which continued despite the other boy pleading him to let go, me standing overhead and then me telling him to knock it off. Now all this distracting class and talking wouldn't be so bad if he actually stopped when I asked him too. He didn't, he just ignored me. I had to confiscate candy from him one day and he pulled out a whiny temper tantrum the next day when I told him I threw away his one piece of gum that he wanted back. Everything about this kid just bugged me. The last week he starting claiming that he had academy classes to go to and that he had to leave class 10-15 minutes early. Now, my class was only 40 minutes long and these kids were already showing up 10 minutes late anyways. Now, I don't mind kids being late, cuz I'm getting paid whether they show up or not and not teaching is always easier than teaching. They are only wasting their own time. However, the idea of showing up for only 10 min annoyed me, so naturally I didn't let him go early. Over time I got tired of his whining, plus he was probably gonna leave on his own anyways, since he didn't listen to me, so I let him go. The other students told me he just went to a PC room, which also pissed me off, as he was lying to my face. By the last 3 days, he was arriving to class, signing in, then leaving for the PC room. Not surprisingly, those were the 3 best days of the camp for that class. I really wanna meet his parents so I can slap them for raising such a selfish, self indulgent asshat. I already know who's gonna get asked all the questions during the regular semester by Eric Teacher. That's right clown, payback is a bitch. I know holding a grudge is wrong, but I have to punish this kid in some way for his awful behavior, since I have no other method or recourse.

Man, there was a lot of grouching in this post, but those were the worst 3 weeks I've had at this job. Period. No debate. Tomorrow I'll discuss the stuff I did outside of class to keep me from going insane.

The Reunion, Part 2

On Wednesday, since we had to through there anyway to meet Maria at the airport, we decided to spend the day wandering around Nagoya. Maria’s flight didn’t get in until the early evening (8pm, I believe), so we had a far chunk of time to spend in Nagoya, once we actually hauled our lazy and cold asses out of bed, into the shower (at the same time…to save time, obviously), and into more or less clean clothing. Once in Nagoya, we met up with Collin’s friend from the Japanese dept in Madison, who also works as a translator through JET, and her JET teacher friend. If you don’t know, JET is the name for the Japanese program of English native speaker teachers. Anyways, we ate lunch at one of the fancy restaurants about Nagoya Station, before heading to Osu Arcade for some people watching (what, you think Collin and I would actually go to a shopping district to shop? hahahahaha). We walked around for a while, just taking in the all the flashing lights and the sidesplittingly hilarious looking people. Personally, I’m glad so, so many people in this world have either no shame or no mirror at home to see how they look, cuz my life would be a lot less humorous without them. We naturally stopped to gawk at all the Final Fantasy XIII posters and videos. The game had only launched a few weeks back, so Japan was still in a state of welcome hysteria. We played a bit of it later in the vacation, and it was tasty. I’m still not sure what to think of the black character in the game, Sazh. He has a chocobo (bird from Final Fantasy universe) that lives in his fro, and I’m not sure if I should be offended for the really stereotypical portrayal of a black character or if I should completely in awe of Japan’s “We don’t give a shit, we’re gonna be as racist as we like” attitude towards issues of political correctness. I mean, they really don’t give a shit over here.

Having tired of the arcade and still having way too much time to burn before going to pick up Maria, we stumbled upon a used videogame store, basically heaven on earth. But because there must be balance in the universe, hell on earth wasn’t too far away. That my friends, was occupied by an anime girl art gallery/studio. Yes, that’s right an entire gallery devoted to the scantily dressed female characters from animes and their realistically impossible breasts. Yuck. I can only imagine the seedy and pathetic characters you would find inside. I imagine that they have to refill the toilet paper quite a bit in there, and its not cuz the patrons have to poop a lot. Also, as we had females in our party, I couldn’t, in good conscience, ask them to walk anywhere near that place and subject them to quite a bit of unhealthy male attention. (shudder)

The used videogame store was wonderful, though. Having spent the last 1.5 years in a country that plays almost zero console games, spending their time solely playing computer games, I was obviously nostalgic for the days when I could wander into Gamestop or something and dig around for some hidden gem in the bargain rack. This place was even better, as they had hardware and systems from every generation. Super Famicom (the precursor to the Nintendo)? Check. Crazy bongo controller for the Donkey Kong rhythm game on the Gamecube? Check. Sega Saturn? Check. Like I said, they had everything. They even had sections just for the best games. Final Fantasy, Mario, Pokemon, and Kirby all had their own sections. Wonderful.

After that massive geek-gasm and after the ladies waited patiently while Collin and I changed our pants, we moved back to Nagoya station for a dessert buffet. Yes, I know that that’s a horrible idea, but we did it anyway. Don’t ever do what we did. We irreparably damaged our bodies and our health so that you don’t have to. However, the desserts were damn good before we we got too sick to taste anything. Having cut down severely on my sweets consumption since I arrived in Korea (K-candy and desserts suck, end of story), I wasn’t able to hang with everyone else. I had to settle for one plate with 7 or 8 pieces of cakes/tarts/deliciousness before moving on to pasta and fruits, which cancels out all the sugar and sweets right? The rest of the party ate considerably more than me, for which I received considerable flack because I’m a guy and I was getting out eaten by girls half my height. Ouch. But I was content in knowing that I would be the only one not vomiting when the whole affair played out. There was a happy ending to this story, as nobody ended up throwing up. Hooray!!

We next headed back to the Station to take in all the pretty lights and spectacle set up for Christmas. They had a massive light show on the side of the building that ran for several minutes before repeating. Pretty damn cool, but I have problems justifying why that even exists. Part of my brain can’t help screaming, “WHAT A WASTE OF ELECTRICITY? WHY, WHY, WHY IS THAT NECESSARY?”. But the other part of my brain tells it to shut up and enjoy the pretty lights.

After the lights spectacle it was finally time to head to the airport and pick up a certain Ms. Sundaram. She was, well to put it mildly, excited to see us. There was lots of hugging and maybe a few tears. Were Collin and I able to feel (black, black pieces of coal where hearts should be seem to prevent “normal” emotional depth), we would have surely been giddy and excited to see her too. We soon moved to the train for the homeward journey, and Maria continued being her goofy, awkward self. But that’s why we love her. Back at the apt, we watched more TV, chatted about random stuff, made fun of each other, and just generally enjoyed the hell out of each other’s company. It was good to have the gang back together. If only we could have had Big Sexy and Rounds there too.

Speaking of Rounds, we got to talk to his crazy ass the very next day, Thursday. And he did not disappoint. In just over 2 hours he managed to make us completely uncomfortable by proposing we three “get busy” (still not sure if he was being serious…you never really know with that kid), turn Collin eating Pringles into some filthy, explicit act of unbridled sexual energy (I kid you not, he asked for Collin to eat some Pringles in front of the camera, then asked him to eat them slower while he…ummm…made some strange noises on the other end………I’m just glad we could only see him from the waist up in the camera), and said some of his trademark nonsense that makes your head explode with the sheer amount of its absurdity/stupidity. So, classic Rounds. I’m already looking forward to visiting him in his inevitably awesome apt down in Chicago come next year.

As for the rest of the day….well, there wasn’t much happening. It was cold and snowy outside, so leaving the apt? Ha, fat chance. Cue more “Californication” and “Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia”.

But, wait, its New Year’s Eve! You had to have done something, right? Well, we nearly didn’t. The plans originally were for Collin’s supervisor to kindly drive us to a local shrine to get blessings on the new year, ring the bell for the new year, etc, but with all the snow that was falling throughout the day, we didn’t figure the co-worker would be willing to drive us and frankly, we didn’t want her to risk herself on our behalf. Plus, we hadn’t really heard from her much all day, so we just kinda assumed the whole thing was off. Which was fine by us. So we went to the grocery store, grabbed some sake and some bottles of Japanese beer (so, so so much better than Korean sHITE), and headed back to the homestead. When midnight rolled around, the energy was palpable. We all raised our arms above our heads (though maybe not, cuz its so much warmer bundled up in the blankets) and each of us gave out an enthusiastic (enthusiastic for a 117 year old person, that is) “woo…”. Energy. Palpable. Not quite as action packed as last year’s heavy drinking and dancing, but I don’t think anyone minded too much.

However, 12:15 rolled around and we got a call from Collin’s supervisor letting us know she was on the way, despite the blizzard. Bless her heart. She showed up in her tiny little Honda or Toyota (the exact opposite of what you wanna be driving through a blizzard with) and we were off. And boy was the going slow. Blowing snow to obscure visibility, covered roads that made lane markers invisible and Asia’s typically small roads made for precarious going at times. At least we were able to keep the conversation light hearted. Collin explained to her the commonplace nature of weather like this in Wisconsin and that people commonly pull all kinds of stunts in the snow (donuts, fishtailing, etc) and she laughed and called us all “idiots” in Japanese. That’s one way to look at it. Frankly, I prefer “badass”, but it’s a matter of perspective.

Finally, we arrived at our destination. Turns out she really wanted us to ring a big bell to symbolize the coming of the new year, so she took us to a tiny little shrine just down the street from her mother’s house, as there would be no crowds or lines. Very, very sweet of her. This little country block of houses was deathly quiet. I loved it. Naturally. We stopped at her mom’s house so she could give us all umbrellas to help with the falling snow. This must be an Asian thing, cuz I’ve never seen anyone in the States use an umbrella to ward off falling snow. Hmmm. Anyways, we walked the 5 minutes to the shrine, knocked on the caretaker’s door to ask for permission, got the go ahead, then rang the hell out of that bell. Well, not me I guess. I went last and my ring was followed by several “Ummm, Wallin….you know you can ring it harder than that right?” What can I say? I’ve got a very gentle touch. I believe the poet laureates of our time, Tenacious D, would agree with me. Sometimes you just gotta bang it/her softly.

Our business with the bell finished, we took a quick tour inside the shrine and were awarded a bag of snacks and treats by the elder caretaker. And they were all very tasty, so thank you again little lady. Back at the co-worker’s mother’s house, the ladies desperately tried to find boots to fit my feet, so my feet wouldn’t get wet and cold in the snow, but shockingly, they couldn’t find any to fit my feet. Not like I’m not used to it. Frankly, I think I understand why Godzilla was always wanting to raze Tokyo: they never had anything in his fucking size. Trust me, its gets mighty irritating over time. That and hitting one’s head on the ceiling of buses or doorways or showers whose faucets come up to one’s armpits. Great for keeping one’s underarms clean, but terrible for keeping one’s head clean. I guess short people deserve some manner of revenge for being inferior in every other way to tall people. God, it would suck to be short. I don’t know how you people do it.

At the big, official shrine, we were met with considerable crowds, even at 2:30 in the morning, well back midnight. We didn't stick around long, as it was still blowing snow and not so warm. We hustled up to the shrine, only to find it under construction, so we had to make our prayers/wishes at a make-shift shrine. Toss in a couple of Yen, bow, clap, make your wish (to get laid alot in 2010....what? what else is there to wish about? world peace? please) and move on. After the prayer, we moved to the stand where we could buy good luck charms for the coming year. Collin, being the sharp fellow he is, bought me the "good luck in love" charm, cuz being me, I could obviously use all the help I could get. Now, I'm not a huge believer in good luck charms and superstition, but if I have any success in 2010 (and a big if that is), it will have to be attributed to the charm, as it couldn't possibly be something I was doing.

Official festivities over, we headed back home, but we suddenly weren't tired. Even though we had been passing out way back at 10pm, we now had no desire to sleep at 3 in the morning. So we watched movies until we passed out at 6am.

As you might expect, Friday January 1st didn't amount to much, as we sleep most of the day away. We finally were awake, dressed, showered and fed by 3 or 4pm, just in time to watch the start of the Sasuke (aka Ninja Warrior) tournament at 5:30pm or so. Sasuke is an insane obstacle course/competition that is hosted every 6 months and features 100 contestants. The obstacles and tasks are insane, without the time limit that some stages have. To give you an idea how hard this thing is, the American Olympic gymnast brothers, Morgan and Paul Hamm, athletes of the highest order that can do incredible things due to their training, failed in the very lst stage and the 2nd stage, respectively. The course has 4 stages. Normally, out of the 100 folks only 5 or 6 finish the first stage. Of course, most of the competitors are just average joes there for fun, but still. Anyways, the tourney featured some fan favorites failing out way, way too early, but we did witness a winner, only the third time that's happened in 20 tourneys. The winner? A shoe salesman, who appears to spend his entire life practicing and training for this course on homemade replicas of the obstacles in his house. Yeah, they are kind of intense. By the time the tourney ended, some 5 hours after it started, it was basically time for bed, as I had to get up at a respectable time the next day, to make my plane back home.

Saturday, the 2nd, was my last day in Japan, so the crew got up at a respectable hour, then sat around relaxing and trying to savor it as much as possible, as it would probably be a long, long time before the gang is fully reunited once again (although to be honest, we weren't completely whole without rounds and JBH, just to name a few). However, time marches on and we soon had to start heading towards the airport. We decided to stop in Nagoya for food, then onto the airport. Except all the restaurants were hella crowded on a Saturday afternoon, so we kept moving on to the airport for food. At the airport we ordered food at some generic restaurant, then listened to Collin, in all his fatigue and hunger, drop the instant classic, "for shiggles". We found it way, way too hilarious, but I'm just glad there weren't any black folks around, especially not Snoop Dogg, as they would have come over and slapped Collin for being so damn white and lame. Meals consumed, it was time for goodbyes. Again, some people (those with hearts) got choked up, while those with coals in their chests didn't. It didn't really hit me until after I was through the security check and couldn't see them anymore. Before then, I could still see Collin and Maria, so what's the big deal? Why get choked up? They are just right there. I can walk over and talk to them more right now if I wanted to, no big deal. Once they were out of sight, I finally grasped the fact that I wouldn't be seeing these people for some considerable time. Sure, I can talk to them every day on Skype, but a computer screen image is not that person standing next to you, feeling inadequate next to you cuz you are so tall and awesome and beautiful. That realization in hand, it was a little difficult to concentrate on my gameboy and books. And on that day, the Grinch's heart suddenly grew 3 sizes.

Pictures: See Facebook album "Collin, Maria, and Wallin sit around Japan"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynnHwhlQSk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yw8BNEOC3s

The Reunion

Well, I've put this off long enough, but time has finally come for me to buckle down and write about the Japan reunion between 3 of the greatest minds of this generation. Well, more like the greatest mind of this generation meeting with 2 other folks of little importance, but sometimes it gets lonely at the top, so I give a bit of undeserved credit to the other two. I doubt they'll mind.

Way, way back, ohhhhhhhhhh so long ago, in December I began my trip to Japan. My flight left from Incheon airport at 9:15am on a Sunday morning, so I had to get up bright and early to make it there. Now, I'm no 3 or so hours away like I was last year, but it still takes some time to get there. Getting to the airport was the easy part, everything was were it got sticky. Get up, eat, shower, walk ten minutes to the airport bus stop, wait for 5 minutes, get on bus, ride bus for an hour to the airport. Done. Everything according to plan (so far). So now I'm at the airport with 1 hour and 45 minutes to check in, buy my reentry stamp, go through security and find my plane. Plenty of time, given how quickly I normally get through Incheon. Or so I thought until I got to the airline check in counter and saw the line. To this day I still don't understand why it was so busy on a Sunday morning. Yeah, Christmas was on Friday, but Koreans all have to go back to work on Monday and they don't have any days off till New Years, which was Friday. I started to get nervous as I watched the line move ever so slowly. Tick, tick tick. 40 or so minutes had slipped by when I was informed that they were taking the last call for my plane. I was only halfway through the line, so luckily I was able to jump to the front and get through. Now with around 45min-1hr before my plane takes off, I've still got to exchange money and buy my reentry permit. Screw exchanging money in Korea, I'll just have to deal with being unable to close my wallet cuz its so full of 10,000 won bills (still the highest bill in circulation most of the time). How much did I take out? 700,000 won. Yeah, that's gonna be a fat wallet. Anyways, from there I moved to the immigration office and naturally there were lots of people. 45 or so ahead of me in line, to be exact. Now I'm sweating, cuz I know just how slow these things can be. Eventually I got through and was off to the security check. Time till flight leaves: 25 minutes. Yeah, cutting it close. While in line, to try and ease my fear and mounting paranoia about missing the flight, I texted Jenna a couple of times, as she was also somewhere in the airport on her way to Vietnam. Course, I doubt they alleviated my fears, as most of the messages consisted of "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, only 20 minutes till take-off! What do I do?"

However, I did get through in time. Just in time for last call in fact (15 minutes to spare before take-off). Sure, I ran all the way through the terminals, but the terror on the unsuspecting Koreans faces as a giant (don't forget beautiful) white man came bounding towards them was so worth it. The plane ride was a quick hour and 30 minutes, but I wasn't done with the drama just yet. This time it was during the immigration paperwork stuff. Employee: "Where is your hotel?" Me: "I don't have a hotel, I'm staying with a friend." Employee: "What is his address?" Me: "I don't know." E: "...Well, what is his phone number?" M: "I don't know" E: "...... (cue massive panic attack)" As I clearly appeared to be a slimy foreigner of ill repute, having no way to track me, via address or phone number, was a major problem. Several other people were called into the mess and they also promptly had a panic attack. Eventually one women ran away with my immigration forms, not to return for another 20 minutes. Presumably she was furiously looking for a Collin Stecker who lives in Ogaki. Eventually, they let me through. I didn't pay enough attention to see if I had a government agent tailing me the entire time I was in Japan, but there probably was one. Frankly, I feel kinda honored. By the time I actually got to the baggage claim area, the machine had been turned off, probably for some time, and my bag was sitting on the ground next to it. Good thing I wasn't in any rush.

Since I wasn't meeting Collin for several hours, I got to Nagoya station and waited for him. Good thing too cuz it took me about an hour just to find where we were going to meet. Allow me to explain. My directions were to find the Sakuradori side of the station and the gaudy gold clock housed within. When I arrived at the station, I was side A (I don't remember the name, sorry). Naturally, as train stations are roughly square shape with 4 sides, and two of those "sides" are occupied by the track, then naturally the other side opposite side A would be the Sakuradori side, or so I assumed. Boy was I surprised to find out that the side opposite Side A was some new Side B instead of the Sakuradori side. Now I'm just confused, angry, and tired. How to solve this pickle? The only way I knew how: walk around the entire outside premises of the station until I found the proper area. As the station is massive, that took near a half an hour. Where was the elusive Sakuradori side? Right next to side A, maybe 100 feet to the right. I'd explain to them that 100 feet does not a different side make, but I already know they don't speak the English so good.

That done it was time for lunch and some reading to pass the time. As a brief aside on the book I was engaged in at the time, Holden Caulfield is an immense ass hat and I hate him more than any other literature character ever, save maybe Edna from "The Awakening". God that felt good to say. Yes, I was reading "Catcher in the Rye" for the first time then and I was tempted to put down the book in anger over his general asshattery EVERY SINGLE PAGE. That's all that needs to be said on that. Early in the afternoon I met up with Collin and we decided just to head back to his apartment as I had already expended considerable energy being worried, stressed, and angry. Back at Collin's we did a whole lotta nothing (which was the major theme of the trip, really). We ate a bunch. I read some more of "Catcher in the Rye" before I got too angry and put it down. We watched alot of episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "Californication", which are guaranteed good times. We went to bed. Not a bad day really. It turned out pretty good.

That theme of nothing held true especially for Monday, as Collin had to work, so I was left alone in the house. What did I do? I got up (late), showered, ate and played Pokemon on my DS. Bam, its now 4:20pm. Why did I just sit on my ass you say? Several reasons. 1. I've already been to Ogaki, so there's little for me to see and do if I wander out exploring. Plus its December, so its not that cozy to be outside for long periods of time. 2. Ogaki isn't close enough to some place worth visiting that I could get to and back by 4:20pm. 3. Collin's apartment is unheated. Yes, that's right, it has no central heating. What does that have to do with anything? Well, somewhere between wearing several layers at all times, constantly staying within arms distance of the space heaters, and sleeping with my coat, hat and gloves on, I slipped into a mini hibernation of sorts. Like a bear during winter, I had little desire or drive to expend energy on anything besides eating and keeping myself alive till spring. Once Collin returned home, I was roused from lethargy by the prospect of wonderful Indian food at Masala Master. I can now say that outside of maybe Maharani in Madison, this small restaurant in a small dink Japanese town is the best Indian food I've ever had. After dinner we enjoyed several more episodes of "Californication". End result: another good day.

Tuesday finally saw me leave the not-so toast confines of Collin’s apartment, as we, along with one of his English teacher friends, headed off to Kyoto to visit some temples. We boarded a train (gotta love the convenience of being able to take a train to anywhere) and were standing in Kyoto station inside of 2 hours. Nice and prompt. Too bad the inter city bus we caught from Kyoto station was anything but. I kid you not, the bus would stop every 50 feet or so. There must have been damn near 50 stops by the time we got off over an hour later. I’m not entirely convinced it would have been slower just to walk the damn thing. At least we met some other friendly travelers from Canada on the bus. We all exchanged many a laugh about how much nicer winter in Japan is as opposed to home (it was 40 something degrees with no snow on Dec 29th) and then moved on our way.

The first stop was the Kiyomizudera Temple. The temple offered a lovely view overlooking Kyoto. Not too much to say about it that couldn’t be said about a million times better by the pictures I took there. The temple was gorgeous. The surrounding woods and mountains were awesome. There were a million people there from every corner of the globe. I couldn’t help finding the Koreans in the crowd and then not so subtly pointing them out to the rest of the group (and I may have literally pointed at them). How do you like it Koreans? Kind of annoying when people spend all of their energy staring at you or observing you like you were some sort of animal. After wandering around for a bit and watching some people nearly fall into the pond while trying to catch water from a little waterfall (see pic 33), we headed back down the hill. But not before we tasted some delicious snacks. Green tea ice cream and green tea cream puffs? Yes please. Don’t bother asking for a Blue Moon ice cream or anything fancy like that. Choices were vanilla, green tea, black sesame, and maybe chocolate. I was certainly shocked to see cream puffs in Japan, but that didn’t keep me from eating it. The cream puffs were messy and spilled all over, so naturally considerable innuendos pertaining to male ejaculate were made. We are only human.

From there, we moved on the Ryozen Kwanon, a monument to the fallen soldiers of WWII. Unlike the temple, this place was empty. Not sure why, really. How does a huge 40 ft tall or so Buddhist deity, massive 20 feet long footprints of the Buddha (now I understand the inferiority complex everybody else gets around me and my shoes…..sorry), and several Buddhist alters not draw in the crowds? Maybe I thought it was so cool cuz it was completely empty and thus quiet and peaceful. Hmmm.
From there, we moved across the parking lot to Kirodiji Temple to take in a lot of pretty. Pretty ponds, pretty traditional houses, pretty gardens, pretty rock gardens (that looked suspiciously like breasts), and pretty trees. Again, see the pics, as my words can’t really do it justice. My favorite part: the trees. Especially the bamboo. Man, I really like trees. Must be because I see all of….zero here in Seoul. Also because lots of trees usually means not lots of people, which is never a bad thing.

The highlight of the entire day, however, came unexpectedly at lunch. We sat down at some random ma and pa restaurant for some food when we noticed the husband reading a newspaper near us. At least that’s what we thought it was till he turned the page and there was a half page picture of a topless woman. Understandably we were taken aback. Here he was, wife 5 feet away cooking the meals, customers 2 feet away, making no attempt to hide or conceal his porn. Good sirs and madams, we have found my hero. How did the wife take the whole thing? Well, when she finished the meals she sat down right next to him and casually moved the porn he had set down, not even breaking her rhythm a little because of the explicit material. Let that be a lesson to everyone out there….porn brings people together, perhaps literally.

Ready to do some heavy thinking as to what exactly we just witnessed in the restaurant, we headed towards the Philosopher’s Path, a famous pathway that leads between several notable temples where presumably the monks spent their days wandering and thinking up great things. Nice quiet area where we discussed how cool it would be to live in that neighborhood on a FREAKIN’ UNESCO World Heritage Site. Also there were lots of cats, which was wonderful, and they didn’t run away if you tried to come near them and pet them, unlike in Korea (they aren’t so good with animals here….).

Leaving the Path we were discussing the inherent goodness of Wisconsin and Wisconsin cheese products, apparently quite loudly, when several white folk walking ahead of us turned around and said, “Did you guys say ‘Wisconsin cheese? Cuz we’re from Wis-can-sin too”. Turns out the guy was from Appleton and his girlfriend, who was visiting, was from Milwaukee. We chatted for a bit on our way back to the station while crammed into the city bus (well, we weren’t crammed in as nobody wanted to get within 10 feet out of fear of catching Anglo-Saxon-it is). In the interest of being friendly and polite, I neglected to mention I hated the guy’s guts for being from THE shithole on Earth that is Appleton. At least he wasn’t from Fond Du Lac. That would have been pretty terrible. Once back at Kyoto Station, we grabbed some ramen and tried not to cringe every time the waitress spoke (her voice was so loud and high pitched and squealy that I blacked out every time she spoke). Finally, we wandered around in amazement at the crazy ass architecture of the mall/train station. Seriously, it is a testament to the architect’s creativity that I can’t actually, in words, explain what the building looked like. It was cool (see pics).

Thus ends part 1. I could have continued the whole thing in one, but for your sake, I’ll break it up into 2 parts.

Pictures: see Facebook Photo album “Collin, Maria and Wallin….um…sit around in Japan”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO2Jn4WA-Q4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTXgDkWf0DI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93G304R53fM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VltUDJAypgo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VltUDJAypgo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Wa_F8EgOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAlp-zzOzSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI-8TTW8KXk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=estGGt7Y2aQ